Robot Living

QinetiQ unveiled a new Talon robot, the Talon IV Engineer.  The Talon is made by QinetiQ’s subsidiary Foster Miller.

The new Talon robot can lift up to 65 lbs with it’s gripper arm that extends 7 ft.  The new arm is also capable of righting the robot if it becomes overturned.

The current Talon robot arm can only lift 20 lbs and extend 5 ft.  The new Talon also has 200 degree shoulder rotation, where the current model has none.

Talon robots are used heavily in Iraq to clear IEDs or improvised explosive devices.  In order to make the new models easier to use, they also come with a game pad style controller, similar to an Xbox controller.  Who knew that playing all those video games in high school would prepare one for operating robots?

Check out the new specs in this PDF file.

Link via (UPI)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 7:56 am and is filed under Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.