Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Leave it to the Army to start putting garbage to good use. According to reports, a base in Baghdad known as Camp Victory has been getting some of its electricity from generators that turn waste products into sweet, succulent fuel. The device, dubbed the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery (or TGER, for short) can take food slop, plastic, paper, styrofoam, annoying kids, moist towelettes, or smaller, non-functioning versions of itself and mash them down to synthetic gas and hydrous ethanol. Of course the concept isn’t without its shortcomings, as it pumps a hefty load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — but for a place that’s short of fuel and high on trash, it’s a dream come true.

[Via Wired; Image courtesy US Army]

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Filed under: Robots

Although other countries have deployed gun-toting robots and there’s no shortage of companies trying to develop weaponized bots for Uncle Sam, it looks like the first test of actual killer robots in battle has ended in a whimper: the Army’s TALON SWORD gunbots, are headed home, after being plagued with control issues. Yeah, that’s right — control issues. Apparently it was too hard to prevent the Army’s gun-equipped robot from moving its gun “when it was not intended to move.” Reassuring, no? The Army doesn’t sound too enthused about another go-round, saying, “once you’ve done something that’s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.” Ouch. On the plus side, at least that’s 20 more years before we’re all put to work in the mines, no?

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We knew the Army’s supposedly-dead Land Warrior high-tech uniform program still had some life in it, but now it appears that good marks from tests in the field might mean it’s going to make a full recovery. The Army sent the 4/9 Infantry (aka the “Manchus”) off to war loaded down with the 16-pound Land Warrior kit, and after some on-the-fly adjustments that made the gear lighter and more functional, the soldiers had talked Land Warrior up to the point where the 2nd Infantry Division’s 5th Combat Brigade Team has now officially requested 1,000 more Land Warrior rigs. The main change is the removal of six pounds of inessential gear, but the crew in the 4/9 also requested and added in a “digital chem light,” which allows buildings and waypoints to be marked in green on an electronic map, and restricted Land Warrior deployment to team leaders and above. There’s still some tricky funding problems to solve — some $102M needs to be set aside for the request — but the Land Warrior project managers say it’s looking promising. Now if we could only get some of that HUD monocle action on the civilian side, our morning coffee run would be a lot more interesting.

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Filed under: Robots

In a shocking tale of totally expected events, iRobot has been awarded a tidy $286 million army contract to produce a merciless, bone-crushing battalion of 3,000 peaceful, loving, bomb-disarming robots (and their spare parts). This comes hot on the heels of Robotic FX getting its walking papers (as well as a canceled contract) on the same military work, so we can’t exactly say we’re surprised. Just another chapter in the ever-unfolding legal and philosophical drama that is the iRobot / Robotic FX story. iRobot — this round is all yours.

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