Robot Living

The Karrar is a 4 meter long robotic plane built by Iran with a 600 mile range.

What the plane can actually carry seems to be up for debate.  On one hand it is supposed to be capable of carrying four cruise missiles, but some say those are way too heavy for it’s size.  Others say the term cruise missile could mean anti-ship missiles and that it is big enough to carry these.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated:

The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship.

I guess they have been reading War & Peace over in Iran, in order to come up with the above phrase.

Wired & MSNBC

Tags: drone, Iran, UAV

I’m not sure how old this video is.  One commenter states it is 2 years old.

That being said, it seems like the Houston police are using an Insitu ScanEagle to spy on it’s residents.

The news team from KPR2 in Houston followed the drone in a helicopter and was told by the police they were in a restricted area and to leave.  Several calls to the FCC and the FCC new nothing about that area being a restricted area.

I wonder if the FCC will make the Houston police file flight plans 60 days in advance as they are doing to buyers of the Tactical Information Craft drone?

The ScanEagle uses a 1.9 hp 2 stroke engine, has a wingspan of 10.2 feet and is 4.5 ft long.  The drone weighs 28.8 lbs without any extra gear and can add an extra 15 lbs of gear and still lift off.  It can also cruise at a speed of 48 knots and stay aloft over 24 hours.

Click through for some ScanEagle photos.

Link via (Boing Boing)
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Tags: drone, UAV

Researchers at the University of Washington recently studied the RoboSapien V2, the Rovio, and the Spykee robots to search for security flaws.

All of these robots can be accessed over the internet.  Unfortunately the researchers have found several easily hackable security flaws in the robots and their internet connections.

Imagine if your home robot was controlled by  hackers and they spied on you?

Link via (IEEE Spectrum)

Tags: University of Washington

The defense and security company QintetiQ has developed a range of firefighting robots.  It has been testing them in England.

Last week one of the robots was taken to a live incident at Membury Airfield to assess a situation involving gas canisters.  The firefighting robots will be particularly useful in potentially explosive situations.

A two year contract is being made between QinetiQ and the London Fire Brigade.

I wonder if the QinetiQ robots will be at all like the firefighting bots from Segway?

Click through for more photos of the robot in action.

Link via (Newbury Today) via (Londonist)

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Tags: fire, firefighter, london, robot

Montreal police have had a bomb disposal robot named Andros since 1995.

A much newer version is shown here.

The older version of Andros has a large control box with toggle switches and a tv screen.  The Montreal police department will be replacing Andros as he is getting old.

Andros has been used to x-ray packages and safely dismantle them.  One part of Andros is removable and the bomb squad kept misplacing it. So they wrote on it,

If found, please call Montreal police bomb squad.

Now they will lose Andros forever to a newer model.

Since 2001, Andros has been involved in over 300 incidents.

Our question today is what happens to old robots?

Where do robots go when they die or are no longer useful?

Are their parts reused for something else or are they thrown on the trash heap?

Link

Tags: montreal