A new tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), is being used by British troops to patrol the skies of the Upper Sangin Valley in southern Afghanistan, helping to identify enemy threats and protect soldiers as they go about there work.

The Desert Hawk III is one of many assets that are employed to help seek out enemy fighters and one of the newest UAVs that the Royal Artillery use. The UAV provides an over-watch capability for soldiers patrolling from Forward Operating Base (FOB) Inkerman near Sangin.

Lance Bombardier Ricky Talbot, explained: “It’s a mini UAV; it provides reconnaissance for the FOB and over looks patrols. If the FOB wants us to check any vulnerable points or firing points we can easily check them with the Dessert Hawk.”

The Desert Hawk can be launched by just throwing it into the wind, but the gunners have learnt that for the best take off it is beat to gain speed before launching and so they launch it from the back of a quad bike. The UAV flies itself by inputting a route onto a digital map and a GPS within the aircraft follows that route. An operator can also fly the UAV using a simple games console hand controller.

At the end of the flight, the reconnaissance vehicle lands itself and, when it hits the ground, intentionally breaks into nine parts to minimise the stress on the aircraft. Different payloads can be bolted onto the UAV which gives the user alternative cameras and views to look at. The footage can be viewed live on the screen of a conventional laptop and also recorded to allow playback for commanders.

OC Robotics has developed a snake-arm robot that is only 12.5mm in diameter. The arm is the smallest snake-arm robot to date and uncoils out of a briefcase-sized box where it is stowed.

The arm is 610mm in length, with longer arms under development, and was designed for the US Department of Defense who needed a way of inspecting and working inside confined or cluttered spaces.

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War casualties are typically kept behind tightly closed doors, but one company keeps the mangled pieces of its first casualty on display. This is no ordinary soldier, though, it is Packbot from the iRobot Corporation.

Robots in the military are no longer the stuff of science fiction. They have left the movie screen and entered the battlefield. Washington University in St. Louis’s Doug Few and Bill Smart are on the cutting edge of this new wave of technology. Few and Smart report that the military goal is to have approximately 30% of the Army comprised of robotic forces by approximately 2020. Of course, they aren’t envisioning robotic soldiers from movies like “Star Wars” and “I, Robot.”

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A semi-autonomous ground vehicle developed by BAE Systems is being used by the UK Border Agency to patrol Calais port in search of illegal immigrants.

Born out of the concept to help protect British troops on foot patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan, the robot, codenamed Hero, is roughly the size of a briefcase with a wheel at each corner. Equipped with lights and cameras, the vehicle has been successfully checking beneath the 10,000 heavy goods vehicles, coaches and trailers that pass through the port each week on the way to the UK.

Richard Williams, civil autonomous systems director, BAE Systems, explained: “Some people will use any means to get past immigration checks, and catching them can be extremely hazardous.

“It’s a backbreaking, dirty and often dangerous job to look under every truck, and with 10,000 of the vehicles each week boarding ferries, its physically impossible for UK Border Agency staff to personally check them all.”

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The US Army is putting robots destined for the scrap heap to good use, by sending them into potentially contaminated areas, so soldiers don’t need to risk their lives.

The robot, the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or CUGV (part of the CBRN Unmanned Ground Reconnaissance Concept), was previously used with explosive ordnance disposal units around the Army, but more current models have made them redundant. Now the CUGV is being used to detect ammonia, chlorine, carbon monoxide, oxygen levels, lower explosive limits, volatile organic compounds, gamma radiation rate and dose rate, temperature and humidity. An onboard lightweight chemical detector means the device will also detect nerve and blister agents.

In addition to just finding contaminated areas and deciphering the level of danger, the robot can also mark the areas for further sampling and investigation or decontamination.

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IBM’s new supercomputer will be used by the Naval Oceanograhpic Office Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC) to prevent disasters at sea.

The supercomputer, a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster, has a peak speed of 90 teraflops (90 trillion floating-point operations per second), making it one of the most powerful systems in the Department of Defense.

The NAVO MSRC is one of four Department of Defense High Performance Computing MSRCs established under the auspices of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

“The Power 575 supercomputer is specifically designed for the type of computationally intensive work undertaken by NAVO,” said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing for IBM. “This system will enhance DoD research efforts and significantly enhance the ability to perform detailed oceanographic modeling and weather forecasting that will help keep the naval fleet and commercial shippers out of harm’s way.”

The Power 575 Hydro-Cluster is powered by one of the world’s fastest microprocessors, POWER6, and is cooled by an innovative water system that makes it highly energy-efficient. The Power 575 is designed to help users tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems in fields such as energy, aerospace and weather modeling.

Scientists at Tufts University are to develop ‘soft and squishy’ chemical robots that can squeeze into spaces down to 1cm, then morph back into something 10 times larger, and ultimately biodegrade, as part of a $3.3 million contract from DARPA.

Constructed mainly from rigid materials, today’s robots are unable to navigate complex environments with openings of arbitrary size and shape.

Based on the performance capabilities of the Manduca Sexta caterpillar, such as its flexibility, climbing ability and scalability, the Tufts team aims to develop ‘chembots’ that will be able to access confined and complex spaces, follow cables, ropes or wires and climb trees or other branched structures. The growth of the Manduca Sexta caterpillar also interested the researchers. From hatching to the end of its larval stage, the caterpillar grows 10,000 fold in mass using the same number of muscles and motor neurons.

Key to success of the chembots will be the use of new biomaterials. The initial chembots will be built with existing synthetic soft materials and actuators; however, the next stage of the project will use novel soft bionic composites that will be biocompatible and biodegradable.

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A wrist mounted translation device being developed for the uniformed services will help soldiers and uniformed civilians interpret key foreign phrases in emergency situations.

The AHKY – Arabic for ‘speak’ – is a wrist mounted verbal translation device

Its technology includes long range photography, heat seeking devices and attachments to surveillance. Its role has been likened to that of the fictional ‘Q’ branch in the James Bond films, creating more unusual devices and gadgets.

The device is the result of a collaboration between the University of Derby and Civil Defence Supply Ltd (CDS) of Lincoln, UK.

California-based UltraCell Corporation has received a follow on contract jointly funded through the US Army and DARPA, to accelerate the further development and field testing of its next-generation 25-watt reformed methanol fuel cell, the XX25.

The XX25 converts a concentrated methanol solution into hydrogen, which is then used by the fuel cell to power computers and communication devices. While a small 250cc canister of fuel can keep devices going for up to eight hours, UltraCell says the system can be configured with large tanks for stationary tasks like surveillance and video monitoring.

Keith Scott, CEO, UltraCell, explained: “This new contract will drive advanced system design and provide units for further military field demonstrations and field testing.

“We look forward to continuing to supply the XX25 for both military and non-military applications.”

Advanced ground penetration radar, originally developed to investigate the soil structure on the Moon and other planets on ESA planetary missions, is now being used in Canadian mines to spot hidden cracks and weaknesses in mine roofs.

Using space technology developed for ESA for the special ground penetration radar GINGER (Guidance and Into-the-Ground Exploration Radar) that will be mounted on a Moon or Mars rover to investigate those planets’ soil structure, the German-Swiss company RST has designed and developed two radars to detect invisible separations in the roofs and walls of mines: the Crack Identification System (CRIS) for hard rock mines and the Potash Roof Inspection System (PRIS) for potash mines.

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Rubbish is being converted into energy by the US Army through the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery (TGER) at Camp Victory in Iraq.

Seeing an opportunity to use biotechnology to solve a real Army problem set Dr James Valdes, scientific advisor for biotechnology with the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, and his team on the path toward creating a machine that could provide the energy to power the generators and stoves that make up about half of the fuel consumption at most forward operating bases.

Valdes explained: “We’ve got a lot of garbage at various operating bases, and it’s got to go someplace. So our logic was that at a forward operating base, could we use the garbage to make fuel and thereby get rid of the garbage and help to keep the convoys off the streets? And that’s how TGER got started.”

TGER is small enough to fit into a CONEX container, but powerful enough to power a standard 60-kilowatt generator. TGER works by turning the solid rubbish into fuel pellets which are fed into a synthetic gas composed of simple hydrocarbons that resembles low-grade propane. TGER processes the liquid and food waste into a hydrous ethanol which is blended with the syngas to create useable energy.

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iRobot has announced a sole licensing agreement with UW TechTransfer at the University of Washington, to commercialise Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Seaglider technology previously supported by the Office of Naval Research and National Science Foundation.

Seagliders help civilian, academic and military personnel make oceanographic measurements at a fraction of the cost of traditional research vessels or moored instruments. These long-range, high-endurance vehicles economise on energy consumption with a buoyancy-based propulsion system to support mission ranges of thousands of kilometers and deployments lasting up to several months. Instruments can be attached to the Seaglider to continuously collect organic physical properties across a range of depths and areas, providing insights to oceanographers and military planners.

Commenting on the agreement, Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman, iRobot, said: “We have a strong track record for transferring new technology from research initiatives into products that support military missions.

“Ten years ago we transformed the original PackBot into a combat-proven robot used today by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and licensing the Seaglider from the University of Washington will help our robots conquer new underwater frontiers.”

An American military supercomputer, built with components designed for the Sony PlayStation 3, has reached a computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.

Codenamned Roadrunner, IBM’s new machine is twice as fast as the company’s previous offering, the BlueGene/L (pictured left).

It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age.

It will also be used for research into astronomy, genomics and climate change.

“Roadrunner will enable us to tackle problems we couldn’t tackle before,” said John Morrison, leader of the high-performance computing division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in California, where it will be installed.

“We’ll be able to run a different level of problems. We’ll be able to do calculations that we wouldn’t even consider before.”