Victory Through Superior Firepower

The darkness of the mission demanded thermal imaging to acquire the target. In the total blackness of the confined spaces and hidden enclaves the enemy favored, no human eye or video camera could detect the signs of life that would indicate the invaders had established a nest for their destructive operations. Only the heat signatures of the swarming, but insidious, foe could reveal their whereabouts, and only by exposing them completely could there be any hope of defeating them. Leaving even a few would enable them to multiply in the darkness and rise again, like bugs, mindlessly bent on destruction, consumption, and their own procreation. The new technology was a Godsend, able to sniff out enemies by the very heat and moisture of their bodies. It went alone into the darkness, and when it found the signs it sought, it's computer mind felt no mercy as the enemy was exposed and demolished, writhing in the death throes of chemical destruction.

Sounds brutal, eh? Good. I say every one of them should die, and no one should shed the tiniest tear or feel the least remorse, just as if they were bugs. Why? Because they are bugs--termites to be exact--and the technology that seeks their heat signatures is the latest in exterminator gear, designed to slip down those narrow passages and hidden ducts that protect the enemy from the human messengers of death pitted in combat against those creatures whose whole existence focuses on eating us out of house and home. As the Termite Wars rage on, and the enemy continues to find ways to elude our extermination warriors, technology steps in to give the homeowner one more weapon in the fight to protect their homes from destruction, while avoiding some of the collateral damage to walls and floors, previously destroyed in the quest to access the invading menace. This remote-controlled weapon is called a Termibot, and for that reason alone, I had to tell you about it. How could I not share the existence of something called a Termibot? Gizmag revealed it to me, and now I reveal it to you. I hope you never need the services of an extermination warrior, but if you do, for your sake and that of your home, I hope the Termibot is on the front lines, in the ducts and trenches of Battlefield Home. "Never give up. Never surrender." Victory!!

The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming!

I'll just toss this one at you. Robots are getting more sophisticated, and it won't be too long before they'll be putting away your dishes and shelving your groceries. At least, that's what they say at Science Daily and MIT.

HT: Futurismic

Amazing Feats Of Strength

Futurismic tipped me off to this AP article about a new robotic accomplishment that's really neato-keen. There is a Japanese man, named Seiji Uchida, who's been paralysed from the neck down for the last couple of decades, but had a dream of climbing 13,741-foot Breithorn mountain, one of the highest peaks in Switzerland. He recently had that dream realised (within 500 feet of the top anyway.) Okay, climbing might be the wrong word, since really his friend Takeshi Matsumoto carried him, but still it was a dream fulfilled for Uchida.

"Wait!" you say, "His friend carried him? Up the side of a mountain? How? What is he, Superman?" No, he's not Superman, but he had the aid of a super new robotic tool, a kind of "wearable robot," a "motorized exoskeleton." Matsumoto strapped it on and gained the strength of ten men. EXAGGERATION ALERT!!! EXAGGERATION ALERT!!! Okay, fine, not ten men, but maybe a couple. According to the Associated Press, if someone would normally be able to leg-press 220 pounds, they would be able to lift 396 pounds, robot aided. Still a vast improvement if you ask me. I wouldn't mind having one of those exo-thingies around for doing household maintenance. Just imagine how quick it would be to clean the garage if super-you could lift 80% more than the regular you. On a less self-centered note, consider what it could mean for emergency rescue units. I can't help thinking about firemen carrying people out of burning buildings, and rescue workers carrying car crash victims out of ravines. Heck, strap two people on, and make it a two-for-one rescue. Nifty, huh?

Robot Swarm On The Horizon

Cool Tech Alert: Introducing the robot swarm. Have you ever watched a large flock of birds turning and swooping in tandem and wondered how that whole thing works? I think their ability to do that has got something to do with the Earth's magnetic field, or something equally scientific, but when I watch a whole group of birds moving as one, there's a part of me that starts believing in bird telepathy. Somehow they're talking; I just don't understand how. Little internal biological radios maybe? "Ready? Time to baffle the humans. Turn right 17 degrees, and down 5 degrees, on my mark. Three, two, one, mark." Then they all giggle and squeal hysterically in little birds cheeps. "Hmmph. Humans think they're so smart. Let them try that."

Well, it looks like humans are trying that, with mechanical proxies. Whatever method the birds use, the effect is obvious, and scientists are studying the flock of birds phenomenon and applying what they're learning to groups of flying robots. There is work on multiple fronts to get flying thechno-gadgets to share information and fly as highly complex units. David Hambling, at DEFENSETECH.org has a look at the current manifestations of the technology, complete with loads of links to projects that are in the works, as well as links to explanations of the more rudimentary definitions and scientific principles at work in the research. (I spent some time on these. Rudimentary is good.)

Hambling comments on the varied potential civilian uses uses for swarming technology, including firefighting and space exploration, but says that many of the most immediate applications will be military:

Swarms are extremely robust, have a high level of built-in redundancy and are well suited to complex and rapidly-changing environments. Swarming robots are a natural for the battlefield. Because the individual elements can be made small and cheap, swarms can consist of a very large number of units – and the success of this approach in nature hints at how effective it is.

That does sound extremely promising on the military front, doesn't it? Hambling spends most of the rest of the article looking at military applications. I'd love to focus more on the civilian applications, like how a swarm of robots could someday fly around and dust my house while I blog, but I did get this info from a site that specializes in "the future of the military, law enforcement, and national security," so I'm not too surprised that Hambling spends more time on security-related applications than on discussing ways that I might get out of housework. He's pretty enthusiastic about the potential of the technology though. He indicates that the advances are coming thick and fast, and that they will change things substantially, and not just militarily. Maybe someday when we see a swarm of something in the distance, turning and swooping in a complicated sky-dance, we'll have to look twice to see whether it's a flock of birds, or a flock of flying robots, mapping out terrain for a new drainage system, or looking for hot spots in the embers of an apartment fire. The applications are probably limitless. We just need to let our imaginations soar a bit.

Droids In Space

Since most of the people reading this blog are my friends, I know there are a few Star Wars fans out there. This one's for you. NASA has some new toys.

June 1, 2006: Six years ago, MIT engineering Professor David Miller showed the movie Star Wars to his students on their first day of class. There's a scene Miller is particularly fond of, the one where Luke Skywalker spars with a floating battle droid. Miller stood up and pointed: "I want you to build me some of those."

So they did. With support from the Department of Defense and NASA, Miller's undergraduates built five working droids. And now, one of them is onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"It only looks like a battle droid," laughs Miller. It's actually a tiny satellite—the first of three NASA plans to send to the ISS. Together, they'll navigate the corridors of the space station, learning how to fly in formation.

The idea is to work with the little robots, and refine ways to coordinate their movements. There's only one of them up in the space station now, but the plan is to add two more, and then get them to start working in tandem. Tiny satellites are the wave of the future. They can easily hitch a ride with other payloads, which makes them cheap to transport, and a string of them could replace a larger satellite in orbit. So, instead of one big satellite circling the Earth (or whatever other planet we might be wanting them to circle) and sending back readings from one location at a time, you would have a network of them, covering more territory with more flexibility. If one gets damaged, the others will shift to compensate, coordinating among themselves.

The getting them to coordinate part is where the space station experiments will come in. It's easier said than done. There's an awful lot of complicated calculations and mechanics to get worked out before the little droids will be able get it all together. The hope is that, when they do, the things that scientists have learned in the process will also help with other complicated space activities, like joining large sections of a space ship.

Possible applications include NASA's return to the Moon (see the Vision for Space Exploration). One way to build a moonship is to assemble it piece by piece in Earth orbit. "Software designed to control small satellites could just as well be used to maneuver the pieces of a spaceship together," says Miller.

So, the applications of science fiction to the real world continue to expand. The science keeps progressing, and the fiction keeps just a jump or two ahead. It's awfully cool to see the movie images that so captivated us in our youth inspiring actual scientific advancement, and coming to life out in space. May the trend continue--with one caveat. I hope they never build a Death Star.