Samsung Granted RoboCop Patent
Kurt Bakke

Samsung just received confirmation for a patent that describes an unmanned automatic shooting mechanism that is designed to support and replace security forces in locations such as airports, harbors, and nuclear power plants.

Samsung fuels the 2011 IT patent frenzy with 151 patents granted in the second week of the year. One of them was particularly interesting and somewhat reminiscent of the automated “enforcement droid” in the 1990 movie RoboCop 2.

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FROM WIRED SHILLS

Northrop Arms Its Robot Pack Mule With Big Gun

Jon Anderson has seen a lot of gawkers pause at his Northrop Grumman booth in the Association of the U.S. Army’s Washington conference. Not that he’s odd-looking or off-putting: He’s a gregarious guy. The stares he’s getting are about the .50-caliber M2 machine gun he’s got mounted on a treaded robot — something Northrop isn’t even selling right now.

“Quite frankly,” explains Anderson, a Northrop advanced-systems employee with short white hair and a whiter smile, “a weapon on a robot brings people into the booth.”

That it does. For the past few years, Northrop has produced a treaded, 60-inch robot vehicle to help troops haul their gear called the Carry-all Mechanized Equipment Landrover, or CaMEL. It’s like a more traditional version of the BigDog robot — a simple flat, motorized platform that putters along at up to 7 miles per hour while taking on up to 1,200 pounds of stuff. Northrop has sold more than 60 of them to the Israeli military; and recently, the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning expressed interest in the CaMEL as a hauler.

Only the version of the CaMEL Anderson brought to the conference doesn’t have any room to load on any gear. There’s a machine gun where the boxes and the body armor should be, with wires stretching from the gun down into the guts of the robot.

With a grin, Anderson calls it a “new application,” comparing his modification to the first time someone thought to arm a drone with a Hellfire missile. “We’re gonna come around the side here,” he says, “and scare people half to death.”

That’s because Anderson has a touchscreen control, mounted in a nearby mockup Humvee, that jerks the gun around, lifting the nozzle skyward, dropping it back down and pitching it 90 degrees around. Passers-by pause their conversations at the sound of the whir of the gears that send the business end of the gun in their direction. Eyes get a little wider. Walking gets a little faster. In case it needs to be said, the gun isn’t armed.



Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/what-robo-haulers-need-now-big-guns/#ixzz13cDUo5va

FROM WIRED

Feds Plot ‘Near Human’ Robot Docs, Farmers, Troops

Robots are already vacuuming our carpets, heading into combat and assisting docs on medical procedures. Get ready for a next generation of “near human” bots that’ll do a lot more: independently perform surgeries, harvest our crops and herd our livestock, and even administer drugs from within our own bodies.

Those are only a few of the suggested applications for robots in a massive new federal research program. The military’s blue-sky research arm, Darpa, is pairing up with four other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Homeland Security, to launch a major push that’d revolutionize robotic capabilities and put bots pretty much everywhere, from hospitals to dude ranches to “explosive atmospheres.”

In a single mega-solicitation for small business proposals, the agencies note that robotics technology is “poised for explosive growth,” thanks to rapid improvements in microprocessing, algorithms and sensors. Of course, Darpa’s been behind much of the progress. The agency has already launched programs to create a real-life C3PO, a bot that can match human intellect and a four-legged BigDog robo-beast. Not to mention the organization’s ongoing research into cognition and neural control, including efforts to map monkey minds to yield neurally controlled prosthetics.

Now, other agencies want to capitalize on progress in robotics to transform their own fields. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is after “robotic applications to surgery,” as well as “computerized therapist personalities [and] artificial intelligence capable of real time monitoring” along with patient interaction and day-to-day care-taking tasks. And robots won’t just be health care providers — the NIH is also interested in organ- and limb-replacement robotics, including advanced prosthetics and “implantable smart robotics for monitoring/drug delivery.”


The USDA is looking at an agricultural-bot takeover that would reduce labor costs and streamline production and food-safety checks. The agency wants robots that’d be responsible for crop harvesting, sorting and inspecting, along with “detecting ripeness, physical damage [and] microbial contamination.” Robots would also rule over animal herds, taking on tasks like “sorting, vaccinating [and] deworming” large numbers of livestock.



Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/darpa-leads-push-for-near-human-robot-doctors-farmers-troops/#ixzz137Q9gFc3

From Industrially complex WIRED shills

Flying Hummers coming soon for a future of peace


In the spring, the futurists at Darpa rethought troop transport. Instead of adding armor or changing the shape to deflect bomb blasts, the agency reasoned, why not let it leap into the sky at the first sign of danger or inconvenience? That’s exactly what Darpa’s “Transformer” project is supposed to be: a mashup of a helicopter, plane and armored truck. And it just came a step closer to reality.

AAI Corporation, a Maryland-based aerospace and defense company, won a $3.05 million contract with Darpa to see if it the technology behind the Transformer can, well, get off the ground, Aviation Week reports. Based on so-called “compound helicopter” technology that the company is developing with Carter Aviation Technologies, the gist is that AAI’s design for the Transformer envisions it to carry four soldiers on the road as a car, but the rotor blades on top allow it to take off vertically into the air. The car’s takeoff functions are supposed to be automated, so soldiers or marines don’t have to be aviators to get it off the ground.

That’s not all. As Danger Room emerita Sharon Weinberger reported in June, it releases DeLorean-like retractable wings, allowing it to fly faster than a conventional helicopter. “Envision a Humvee-like vehicle with wings that fold out from the side and attach just above the rear door,” AAI Vice President Steven Reid told Weinberger. Elements of three vehicles in one.



Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/#ixzz10yeLVw8q