To Create the Perfect Machine, Soldiers Build a Robot Out of Robots

To Create the Perfect Machine, Soldiers Build a Robot Out of Robots | Popular Science@import "/files/css/a1c433465f8fe485195cb11d70c36108.css";@import "/files/css/33f6b7ecb4513ed2fe6c670880a27187.css"; home Login/Register Newsletter Subscribe RSS GadgetsComputersCamerasSmartphonesVideo GamesCarsConceptsHybridsElectric CarsScienceFuture of the EnvironmentEnergyHealthTechnologyMilitaryAviationSpaceRobotsEngineeringDIYProjectsHacksToolsAuto DIYMore From Our Partner: Toolmonger GalleriesVideosColumnsThe GrouseSex FilesGreen Dream Innovation ChallengesHow It WorksFeatures Tweet Digg To Create the Perfect Machine, Soldiers Build a Robot Out of Robots By Clay Dillow Posted 11.08.2011 at 3:49 pm 5 Comments
A Robot Made of Robots via Ares

Over at Fort Benning, soldiers at the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment aren’t waiting for military robot makers to come up with the right mix of robotic capabilities. Putting that military penchant for improvisation into practice, soldiers there are mashing up their military robots to give themselves the capabilities they want, piggybacking one robot on top of the other until they get the right mix of gear.

Specifically, soldiers there mounted a TiaLinx Cougar 10 (that’s the robot that can hear your terrified breathing through a concrete wall via radio frequency sensors) on top of a faster and stronger Lockheed Martin Squad Mission Support System (SMSS), a load-bearing unmanned ground vehicle that went to Afghanistan recently for operational testing.

Related ArticlesThis Robot Can Hear Your Frightened Breathing, Even Through WallsA Hexacopter That Sees Motion and Hears Breathing, Even Through WallsHow The First Crowdsourced Military Vehicle Can Remake the Future of Defense ManufacturingTagsTechnology, Clay Dillow, fort benning, lockheed martin, military, military robots, robotics, robots, tialinxThe DIY rig was designed by soldiers at Fort Benning to mitigate some problems they were having with the Cougar 10. While they love the ability to detect a human presence through a wall or obstacle, the Cougar 10 was too slow for teams of soldiers who were trying to quickly sweep and secure multiple buildings. The makeshift solution: piggyback the Cougar 10 aboard the SMSS, which is designed to move at speed and carry up to 600 pounds of payload.

Combined, the two ‘bots performed the mission the soldiers needed it to. But that doesn’t mean a Cougar 10/SMSS blend is a perfect robot by any means. The SMSS is large and loud, unfit for stealthy missions (during another night ambush exercise a SMSS packed with thermal imaging gave away a unit’s position with its engine noise). On the other hand, the Cougar 10 is designed to help soldiers get the drop on their enemies.

But for the mission at hand--sweeping and clearing a series of buildings--it was the right robot for the job. The fact that soldiers were able to quickly build their own customized robot out of robots is cool, both in terms of crafty DIY ingenuity and in terms of the future of modular military robot design.

[Ares]

Previous Article: Bell Labs's Nethead Makes Telepresence Robots Affordable for AllNext Article: Video: A Steerable Remote 'Telexistence' Robot that Transmits Sight, Sound, and Touch to the Operator 5 Comments Link to this comment beantown179 11/08/11 at 6:06 pm

Wait if we let soldiers do this then how will the defense contractors make all their money?

Link to this comment JediMindset 11/08/11 at 6:14 pm

sadly they wouldn't be giving the soldiers the credit and they pay check. think about it this way, soldiers just follow orders. that's their job. so another "superior" telling them to hand over their creations is just another mission.

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Link to this comment tcolguin 11/08/11 at 7:10 pm

If you are working for a company and build a new robot, you don't get it either, it is the companies not yours. Nothing different here.

Link to this comment WhittyMike 11/09/11 at 2:21 pm

These are

the droids we've been looking for...

Link to this comment Zreiser 11/09/11 at 11:21 pm

Yo dawg, I heard you liked robots, so we put a robot on your robot, built out of other robots to help make even more robots for your robots!

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November 2011: Data Is Power

This month, we examine all the ways information is driving our future, from dating to crime to how we see the world.

Plus: turning your smartphone into a wallet, BMW's electric cars, and a space heater with no fan.

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Popular on Popsci Most Viewed TechnologyGallery: A History of Data TheftGallery: A Glass Astronomical Database Goes Digital Gallery: When the Best Tool Is an AnimalArchive Gallery: The Power of Data Most Emailed TechnologyWhen the Best Tool for the Job Is an AnimalGallery: When the Best Tool Is an AnimalVideo: Kinect Provides the Seeing Eye in a Robotic Guide Dog for the BlindNew Super-Black Material Absorbs 99 Percent of All Light That Dares to Strike ItRussia's Phobos-Grunt Mission to Mars is Stuck in Earth Orbit After Engines Fail to FireTo Create the Perfect Machine, Soldiers Build a Robot Out of RobotsVideo: A Steerable Remote 'Telexistence' Robot that Transmits Sight, Sound, and Touch to the OperatorHome 3-D Viewing Equipment Is Getting Smaller and Smaller and SmallerBell Labs's Nethead Makes Telepresence Robots Affordable for AllDoctor Offers Laser Treatment to Permanently Make Brown Eyes Blue Most Commented TechnologyTo Find Alien Cities, Look for City Lights on Distant PlanetsA Texas Sheriff's Department is Launching an Unmanned Helodrone that Could Carry WeaponsThe Unsplittable BitDoctor Offers Laser Treatment to Permanently Make Brown Eyes BlueNew Super-Black Material Absorbs 99 Percent of All Light That Dares to Strike ItThe Glory of Big DataRussia's Phobos-Grunt Mission to Mars is Stuck in Earth Orbit After Engines Fail to FireTo Keep a Steady Stream of Satellites Going Up, DARPA Wants to Launch Them from AirplanesGround-Based Laser Cannon to Turn Space Debris into Self-Powered Flaming De-Orbiting RocketsThe Greatest Data Thefts in History Name Address 1   City State STATE Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware DC Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York N. Carolina N. Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island S. Carolina S. Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington W. Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Zip Code Email Today on PopSci.com The Ten Most Amazing Databases in the World581101211Can Technology Save the Military From a Data Deluge?582371213See The Data-Centric Universe, Then and Now582431214The Santa Cruz Experiment: Can a City's Crime Be Predicted and Prevented?576731215The Glory of Big Data577221216The Most Amazing Science Images of the Week, October 24-28580521217Archive Gallery: The Telephone580511218Gallery: Last Night's Auroras as They Appeared from Across the Hemisphere579731219iPhone 4S Review: Apple's Restraint5798512110Inside the DIY Weapons Workshop of the Libyan Rebels5792612111Archive Gallery: Classic Thrill Rides and Carnival Attractions5776612112 Footer Menu Subscribe to the Print EditionSubscribe to the Digital EditionRenew SubscriptionCustomer ServiceSite MapAbout UsContact UsAdvertisingPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseAbuseRSS FeedsPS Showcase

 

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Scientists study 'galaxy zoo' using Google Maps and thousands of volunteers

ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2011) — The reddest galaxies with the largest central bulb show the largest bars -- gigantic central columns of stars and dark matter -- according to a scientific study that used Google Maps to observe the sky. A group of volunteers of more than 200,000 participants of the galaxy classification project Galaxy Zoo contributed to this research.

More than two thirds of spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, display a central bar that can extend for thousands of light years. These colossal elongated structures are made up of collections of stars and dark matter which are held together by gravity.

Now a team of researchers from Europe and the USA have measured the bar length of some 5000 galaxies with the help of amateur astronomers. The most precise results (those obtained for 3150 galaxies) have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The study comes under the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science initiative in which more than 200,000 volunteers assisted in classifying a million galaxies through images provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey astronomical catalogue. As for the bars, 150 amateur astronomers have recorded their observations on a webpage specifically created for this purpose. The page is currently still active despite being closed to any further data entry.

Ben Hoyle, researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (University of Barcelona, Spain) and coordinator of the study, stresses that "this webpage combines Galaxy Zoo classifications with Google Maps technology." More precisely, the team has used the Google Maps Sky interface which allows to see the sky, especially the galaxies, as seen from Earth's surface.

The redness of bars

"In this way we have compiled some 16,000 measurements of the bars of 5000 galaxies, which is a sample a hundred times greater than previous ones. We have also come to many different conclusions, such as the fact that redder galaxies, which are stopping star formation, have longer bars," says Hoyle.

In the electromagnetic spectrum, the colour red comes from older, cooler stars whereas the colour blue is linked to hotter and younger stars. The study also reveals that the bars tend to be redder than the rest of the galaxy, which indicates that they have an older stellar population.

Other conclusions indicate that those galaxies with a larger bulb (a central agglomeration of stars) have longer bars. In addition, barred galaxies are more likely to display spiral arms than unbarred galaxies.

The images provide examples of barred galaxies with spiral arms. In the first row, the arms are connected to the ring around the bar. In the second row, the arms are connected at the end of the bar and the third row shows a mixture of the two. Image: Ben Hoyle et al./Galaxy Zoo.

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Journal Reference:

Ben Hoyle, Karen. L. Masters, Robert C. Nichol, Edward M. Edmondson, Arfon M. Smith, Chris Lintott, Ryan Scranton, Steven Bamford, Kevin Schawinski, Daniel Thomas. Galaxy Zoo: bar lengths in local disc galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2011; 415 (4): 3627 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18979.x

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