Robotic Heroes
Advanced robots that can function in areas or situations too dangerous for humans are finding use in the military, law enforcement, and even the space program.
Battlefield robots under development or in use include iRobot’s Bloodhound, a machine that can autonomously navigate its way to wounded soldiers and administer medical treatment; and Packbot, another iRobot product that was used in Afghanistan to search caves for al Qaeda or Taliban fighters.
Current research focuses on equipping Packbots with sensors to detect biological agents, a function already built into the Mini-ANDROS II police robot, which is used in SWAT operations, surveillance, and bomb disposal, and can circumvent obstacles using an articulated track system.
The Micromechanical Flying Insect, currently under development at the University of California at Berkeley, is modeled after winged insects to be a small, airborne machine that could theoretically spy on enemy troops with impunity, among other things.
The Sept. 11 bombing provided an opportunity to demonstrate search-and-rescue robots, which were employed to sift through the wreckage of the World Trade Center for trapped people; the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is working on a device that can root through collapsed buildings and mines, or sense dangerous acids or chemicals.
PARC researcher Dr. Craig Eldershaw is working on PolyBots, robots that consist of modules that work as a team and can reconfigure themselves to suit the environment.
Robots in use at NASA include remotely operated vehicles such as the Mars Sojourner, while Robonaut, a joint project between the Johnson Space Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is a partially-humanoid machine designed to assist astronauts in maintenance and construction projects.
A major challenge to improving robot technologies involves investing the machines with a sense of autonomy, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Howie Choset notes that “The challenges in making autonomous robots are in developing algorithms that are guaranteed or proven to work, developing complete algorithms that are robust, interpreting sensor information–perception and positioning a robot.”
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from Laptop (12/02) Vol. 21, No. 23, P. 108; Hendrickson, Nancy .
