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5/23/2006 - HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AFPN) -- Building roads and airfields in Afghanistan presents a unique challenge that stateside heavy equipment operators don’t encounter … minefields. That is why members of the 823rd Red Horse -- or Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers -- here joined the Air Force Research Laboratory at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., to develop a robotic mine-area clearing vehicle. “The mine-area clearing vehicle is going to provide the Air Force -- specifically Red Horse combat engineers -- the opportunity to clear a known minefield or an unknown minefield to expand the air base...

In Europe, several robotic warplanes ( the Neuron, the Barrakuda and the Corax) are under development. These UACV (Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicles) concepts began in the Untied States, but Europe wants to remain competitive with the U.S. military aircraft industry. All three programs include stealth features, and aim on playing in the same league as the American J-UCAS (Joint Unmanned Combat Aerial System). This program includes the Boeing X45C and the Northrop Grumman X47B Pegasus . These European projects are the first foreign competitors for the American robotic warplane work. The Neuron project is a six nation European effort, which...

Small robotic spy-planes have been developed that use shape-shifting wings to switch from being stable gliders to ultra-manoeuvrable fliers. The articulated wings – with a span of 60 centimetres – were inspired by the way seagulls alter their wing-shape during flight, says Rick Lind, an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, US. The robot plane, or drone, has a joint halfway along the leading edge of both its wings. Actuators at this “elbow” joint and at the “shoulder” joint of each wing, where it connects to the fuselage, allow the wing structure to shift from an...

This is the fourth installment in my Developing "The Disaster Master Mind©" series. I’m praying that you are well on your way to a completely screwed up life after just reading and obeying the first three of the 10 habits of the Decidedly Defective People©. If success is still looking like it might attach itself to you, do not despair, stay the course and chaos can be yours, too. Be patient, as fiascos take time and demand dedication in order to set in motion the forces for failure; therefore, be vigilant and the repugnant life will be yours before you...

A futuristic world, complete with autonomous household companions, android medics and even robot entertainers, will greet visitors to the Prototype Robot Exhibition in Japan from 9 June, 2005. The exhibition forms part of the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, which runs from 25 May to 25 September. Several utility robots, including autonomous garbage collectors, vacuum cleaners and security guards, are already patrolling the wider Expo. But the Prototype Robot Exhibition gives academics and commercial researchers a chance to showcase a more distant vision of robot utopia. The exhibition features a mock-ups of homes, streets and workplaces from the year...

The robotic drilling system sends information on bone structure to a computer (Image: Tactile Technologies) A “robotic” dentist's drill is to be tested on humans in Europe and the US, and could represent the first step towards more automated dental procedures. The drill, developed by Tactile Technologies, based in Rehovot, Israel, is designed to take the complexity out of dental implant work. It could make operations cheaper, quicker and less painful for patients, its developers claim. A dental implant is a small metal pin fixed into the jaw to mimic a tooth's root. It is used to anchor replacement...

LOS ANGELES - After a series of delays, NASA has scheduled April 15 as the launch date for the first robotic spacecraft designed to rendezvous in orbit with other satellites without any human intervention, officials said Friday. If all goes as planned, the DART spacecraft — short for Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology — will soar into space off the California coast, catch up with an orbiting Pentagon satellite and maneuver around it, making close approaches and moving away. "We're prepared for launch," launch director Omar Baez said Friday during a televised news conference from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center...

90-Day Mars Trip Said Possible By Irene Mona Klotz, Discovery News Oct. 20, 2004 — A team of University of Washington researchers believes it has found a way to cut roundtrip travel time between Earth and Mars by 95 percent, giving astronauts a much higher chance of pulling off a successful mission while minimizing their exposure to dangerous radiation. "If it's going to take 2 1/2 years (to travel back and forth to Mars), the chances of a successful mission are pretty low," said project head Robert Winglee, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the Seattle-based university. Taking...

NASA (news - web sites)'s chief is urging his Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) team to press ahead with plans for a robotic repair mission to the aging observatory, saying, "Let's go save the Hubble." Administrator Sean O'Keefe says he will ask Congress for money to accomplish the job. He estimates it will take about $1 billion to $1.6 billion to develop and launch a robot to make the needed upgrades to keep the popular telescope running and to get it out of orbit once its work is through. In a meeting with more than 200 Hubble engineers...

BOSTON (AP) - For years, futurists have dreamed of machines that can read minds, then act on instructions as they are thought. Now, human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send. It's a small, early step in a mission to improve the...

CHICAGO — Ground-based transportation will take a new turn in mid-March as 20 driverless vehicles — described as supercomputers on wheels — race across the southern California desert in a million-dollar, winner-take-all competition sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Darpa's Grand Challenge race, possibly the most daunting test ever for robotic technology, will take the vehicles over sand dunes, through valleys and across rivers at speeds up to 60 mph. Covering a course stretching from Barstow, Calif., to Las Vegas, it will call on the vehicles to traverse almost 250 miles in less than 10 hours, all without...

<p>NASA's Opportunity rover sent back its first 360-degree color panoramic image of the surface of Mars on Monday, and extended a robotic arm that will touch the planet's surface.</p> <p>The Mission team unveiled a photograph showing a wide expanse of red soil and the bumpy edge of a crater where the craft sits. "It provides us with a real sense of you are there," said Jeff Johnson, of the U.S. Geological Survey.</p>

<p>Technically, Stephen Thaler has written more music than any composer in the world. He also invented the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush and devices that search the Internet for messages from terrorists. He has discovered substances harder than diamonds, coined 1.5 million new English words, and trained robotic cockroaches. Technically.</p>

The problems that befell the Mars mission won’t stop the dawning of a new era in the space race. Iain S Bruce explains why Hurtling through time and space, the Mars probe landed, bounced and rolled to a stop. Waiting back on earth for robotic arms to crank into life, extend four delicate solar panels towards the stars and begin broadcasting a signal of success, mission control stopped, the world held its breath, and then nothing happened at all. It was no way for a 93 million mile journey to end, but even as Beagle 2’s British launch team bravely...

Cyber women test what's real By Jo Twist BBC News Online technology reporter Software cyberbabes, created by powerful computers, sophisticated modelling packages and active imaginations are getting extremely human-like. Rene Morel's 3D model has a very human face Virtual cyberbabes are used in advertising campaigns, hit shoot-em-up games, and the pop industry, from Lara Croft to virtual pop idols, T-Babe and Diki or DK-96. Some of the best 3D models around are currently on show at an exhibition which has just opened in London called Perfectly Real: Women in Bits and Bytes. But they raise questions about what people...

Samantha Stewart has owned Patton for a few months, and she is concerned because her robot dog gets temperamental, sits and whines a lot and disdains playing with his ball. The 27-year-old graduate student from Aurora has come to the Sony Gallery in Chicago hoping for a cure. Otis Gates, a traveling vet-shrink-Mr. Goodwrench-sales rep for Sony's Aibo line of entertainment robots, hooks Patton to a laptop computer for a diagnostic exam. Head, legs, sight, hearing, speaker, lights, sensors, camera check out fine. Gates' snap diagnosis: Patton is just going through a stage -- unfortunately it happens to be the...

In case y'all went to bed early last night, albagore the robotic tuna was Conan's guest on NBC at 12:30am. Set your TIVOs - I believe Conan O'Brian's shows are rebroadcast the following day at 7pm on Comedy Central. The goron was predictibly wooden. When asked about his position on WOT, tunawood just rambled and contradicted himself that he opposed what Bush was doing but HE would form an international coalition and win the war. This after the hypocrite said that Al Quada is back and the Bush admin isn't doing enough. Then, with right and left hands flailing, albagore...