army

U.S. military expands robot patrols in combat zones

WASHINGTON--We tend to hear more about the growing number of human bodies being shipped off to combat to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. Army is also dispatching more and more robots.

Since the conflicts began five years ago, the military branch has been steadily stepping up deployment of both unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, Col. John Burke, the Army's director of unmanned systems integration, said Wednesday.

Burke, who was speaking at the second day of a confab here hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, touted the machines' surveillance capabilities as a proven success, at … Read more

EA gets strangely political with 'Army of Two' E3 mailings

Since before the days of Contra, two-player cooperative gameplay has been a big draw for gamers. Violence is best when shared, and working with your best friend to blow up bad guys somehow just feels right. EA is trying to recapture that sense of cooperation with its upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3 title Army of Two. You play half of a mercenary duo that must work together to perform various paramilitary tasks, with your partner controlled either by a friend or by the game's A.I.

Like nearly every major publisher tries to do with nearly every major upcoming … Read more

Photos: Army touts top tech inventions

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told a National Guardsman serving in Iraq, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." The soldier had been inquiring about the readiness of Humvees for combat conditions--specifically, the need to "up-armor" the vehicles to provide better protection against enemy fire.

But even if a nation's military has to do the best it can with the gear it has, it can also plan ahead for the gear it knows it will need. That's the dual … Read more

'LANdroid' keeps troops plugged in

Robots might not be fighting wars by themselves yet, but they're doing their part among the support ranks in the battlefied. As equipment such as pocket-sized spy bots become increasingly common, other types of mobile equipment aren't far behind.

DARPA's "LANdroid" prototype, for instance, is a wireless network router mounted on treads that looks like a tiny tank. Like the ultra-portable spy bots, the palm-sized device is designed to be dropped by Army troops in the field, then autonomously find the best spot to station itself as a network hub, according to OhGizmo.

It's … Read more

Field trip for Army's Land Warrior tech

The soldier of the future is looking for a little help from Congress in the here and now.

One of the Army's high-tech works in progress is a program called Land Warrior that's designed to loop individual foot soldiers into an electronic battlefield network. Helmets would be fitted out with headphones, microphone and a miniature computer display in an eyepiece. Assault rifles would have a digital video camera along with a laser rangefinder and thermal sight. GPS tech would help soldiers know whether the noise around the corner comes from friend or foe.

The Army this week put … Read more

Photos: The Army's vision for soldier tech

How can soldiers on the ground see around corners and shoot without exposing their position? The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program envisions a family of high-tech gear including sensors, aerial drones and manned and unmanned ground vehicles, all fully networked and linked to individual soldiers. Click here for a tour of the equipment.

The keyboard with a PC inside

As the convergence trend steams ahead, we've seen everything from air-purifying lamps to camera-speaker combos. (We didn't say it was a good trend.)

So logic would dictate that this would be inevitable: the keyboard PC. Cybernet's ZPC-945SL is an all-in-one QWERTY keyboard that includes an Intel Pentium 4 processor, up to 2GB of memory, a hard drive, built-in speakers, a mini-PCI slot and six USB ports, according to Tech Digest. But even though it sits only 1.5 inches high, we're not sure if it would be approved by the ergonomics police.

Ahh, the smell of B.O. in the morning

The Brits are using a simulated combat environment developed by the University of Southern California, to treat soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

By bringing to life a "virtual Iraq," complete with the realistic thumps and bumps of battle, the program allows troops to "relive and confront psychological trauma." All this takes place in a graduated manner so as not to re-traumatize, according to the University of Reading's Visualisation Centre.

The Iraq simulation experience is "fully immersive," meaning that patients wear VR goggles that transport them to the virtual battlefield. There, an attending … Read more

Borg birds fly right--and left

Alfred Hitchcock must be kicking himself. Scientists from the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University in China have installed a computer chip into a pigeon's brain, allowing the bird to be remote controlled.

The chip is connected to the brain with hair-thin electrodes implanted in key brain locations. Scientists then use a computer to order the bird to fly right or left and up or down.

The research is "military and intelligence" related, paralleling similar work by scientists with "Swiss Army homing pigeons" and sharks by the US Navy.

The Chinese scientists have … Read more