Filed under: Robots

WowWee goes out of its way to make one thing very clear about the Rovio: “this is not a toy.” That being said, it doesn’t make the patrolling sentry any less fantastic, as critics over at Robots-Dreams proclaimed that it was “intuitive and a pleasure to use from the moment you first open the box.” From the painless setup process to the unparalleled mobility, reviewers sounded like they were grinning from ear-to-ear during the entire writeup process. It performed its robotic sentry duties with vigor and valor, and the review crew couldn’t help but note that this bugger was “positioned to be the hottest robot for the upcoming holiday season, and for a long time to come.” In other words, if you’ve been on the fence about dropping three bills on this thing, all your worries about it potentially sucking just got thrashed.

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Filed under: Robots

Sure, you laughed yesterday when you heard professor Noel Sharkey warn against the impending, apocalyptic man vs. machine battle that was to come, but this news may have you singing a different tune. A pilot program in Nevada which employed robotic sentries to patrol Hawthorne Army Depot is getting an upgrade: 24 brand new drones called MDARS, or “Mobile Detection and Assessment and Response System.” The $40 million purchase will nab the Army diesel-powered robots which operate at speeds up to 20 MPH, use RFID tags to keep track of locks and barriers, and can run for 16 hours without refueling. Though the bots have been tested with automatic weapons, these new versions will be equipped with non-lethal armaments, thus making them considerably less deadly when Skynet goes online.

[Via Wired]

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Filed under: Storage

When most people express concern and worry about data loss, it’s usually due to the more common cases: drive failure, accidental deletion, power surges from lightning storms, etc. Not so often do drive companies cater to those with paranoia of fire / flood / acts of God, etc. crowd, but for that crowd SentrySafe and Maxtor have teamed up on the FIRE-SAFE/Waterproof safe and drive. The drive is essentially a OneTouch 4 Mini decked with backup, restore, and recovery software (like Maxtor SafetyDrill) and a tank-like shell that’s rated for 30 minutes of fire protection up to 1,500°F; the safe is merely, well, a safe with a driveless USB passthrough and fire protection up to two hours at 1,800°F. You’ll have to plunk down a fairly crazy $320 for the 160GB and $260 for the 80GB drives though, and $420 for the safe, so be forewarned: this is only useful data protection if you’re fearful of what happens when bits meet the elements. The drives are single disk enclosures — not RAID — and thus have no redundancy themselves should an old fashioned drive crash occur.

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