Well, it looks like everyone’s favorite robot vacuum and military ‘bot maker is going public! This, my friends, is big news. What does this mean for the future? Are the customer support lines now going to be outsourced to India? Will the robots now come with DRM? Or will they turn out like Do-No-Evil-Google? I’m hoping for the latter (including the skyrocketing share prices).

So, start saving those pennies now so you can grab yourself some shares.


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Well, it looks like meth lab perps are getting all fancy on law enforcement and boobytrapping their operations. We get a story out of the St. Louis area about a bomb removal robot getting put to good use.

"… RMI-9WT Bomb Removal Robot, owned by St. Louis County police, … detonated the [bomb] in a nearby open field, preventing certain injury or death to police and civilians. Shrapnel flew as far as 75 yards away."

"”If not for the robot, our people would have hand-carried them (explosives) out."

The robot sutained about $25,000 worth of damage, but can be repaired, and is certainly cheaper than buying a new one – about $100,000. The St. Louis police department has at least two of them.


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Here’s a neat article about the UNC Hospital (just down the road from me) using Da Vinci surgery ‘bots to treat cervical cancer.

Doctors there think that robots are one of the best ways of doing a hysterectomy. One patient said, "I had surgery July 1 on Friday and came home on Saturday."

A docotor said, " … I don’t think it’s far-fetched to think that traditional laproscopy will be obsolete in the next 10 to 15 years … " That’s pretty crazy to think about. We’ll see.


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Here’s a few more links from RoboCup 2005.

• Picture slideshow
• Coverage from a German paper (with team links).
• Write up on the rescue robot competition.
  
  

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Apparently, Boeing is getting heavy into the Army’s new "Future Combat System" plan full force. Already, 600 Boeing workers in the Kent, WA area are working on the contract, and at least 100 more are expected to be added by the end of the year. But, the real crazy part is that that number is only a, "tenth of the total number of engineers, software developers and others across the country who are working on the project."

The Army, in a $21 billion dollar move, plans to have a whole brigade outfitted with, "a family of 18 vehicles and robots, sensors, computers and communications equipment." In the mean-time, a 3,000 soldier test brigade is putting the technology to the test.

The Army then plans on buying 15 brigades worth of equipment over a 20 year period.

That, my friend, is a lot of money.


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