Military tech

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

WASHINGTON--Singapore may not occupy much more than a tiny dot on the world map, but it's counting on drones and other remote-controlled vehicles to make its military mighty.

As one of the world's busiest sea ports, the Asian city-state's "survival and prosperity depends on national security," Tan Peng Yam, deputy chief executive of the country's Defense Science &Technology Agency, told attendees at the first day of the annual North America symposium put on here by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Because a third of the world's trade--including 90 percent of … Read more

It's a common combat-after-dark feature on YouTube: the greenish, hot white blob--representing the human circulation system--bolts from cover and is promptly cut in half by 20mm fire.

Now that same thermal imaging technology is lighting up some even tougher foes, termites.

The Australian company Termicam presents Termibot, a thermal video equipped robot that searches out termite nests by homing in on their thermal signature--and it does it without tearing your house apart. That's right, the heat generated by these busy little buggers shows up right through the baseboards.

Thermographic devices detect infrared radiation emitted by an object based … Read more

Leave it to Harvard to replace spies with flies.

According to the MIT Technology Review, robotic insects may be the future of military surveillance.

With funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a team of Harvard researchers led by Robert Wood have developed a robotic fly that could be used for surveillance and chemical-detecting missions.

Videos of the fly taking off and a slow-motion clip of the wing mechanics are available on the Technology Review site.

With a wingspan of 3 centimeters and a scant weight of just 60 milligrams, the fly's tiny robotic parts are … Read more

News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman visited the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Ariz., as part of his Road Trip 2007 around the Southwest.

Located about 20 miles south of Tucson, the museum is located on a former Titan missile launching site. There, crews of four worked 24-hour shifts during which two people always had to be together to ensure safety and security. In this image, the tip of the missile--with warhead removed--is viewed from above through a glass window that allows museum visitors to peer down into the silo.

See more of his photos from the exhibition here.

Contrary to popular belief, not all of Japan's R&D goes into robots and Hello Kitty (or so we're told). In fact, it's not even all destined for the consumer market.

NEC, for example, has applied its technological prowess to "the world's first automated border control system that uses facial recognition technology capable of identifying people inside their automobiles," according to Pink Tentacle, and it's already being used at checkpoints between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The biometrics system was developed to break immigration logjams in China and elsewhere, checking chip-embedded national ID … Read more

They're no Lee Majors, but thanks to groundbreaking work in prosthetics, some people with missing limbs are becoming (at least partially) bionic. Earlier today, sister site CNET News.com took a look at two devices that are helping get amputees back on their feet and into the kitchen, office, and even the shooting range.

Yesterday, Scottish company Touch Bionics announced its i-Limb Hand, which ushers in the next generation of prosthetic hands. The i-Limb Hand uses individual motors in each finger, so people wearing it can move fingers independently of each other. It's also got pressure sensitivity, so … Read more

Once again, the top dog among robotic subs is a Gator.

The SubjuGator team from the University of Florida has finished first for the third straight year in the balmy San Diego waters of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition.

There aren't many details to offer just yet on how Sunday's finals went. So far, it's just the Gators and the Proteus team from Cornell University that have posted brief notes on who won. Cornell reports that it finished fourth overall, behind Florida, the University of Rhode Island's (Ram-boat 8) and Montreal's Ecole de Technologie Superieure (… Read more

Many of us at Crave aren't exactly the outdoorsy types, but we do our best to help exercise-enabled individuals in the interest of trying to be a full-service gadget blog. Recently, for example, we featured a tent that can keep your electronic equipment powered even while deep in the woods. And today we offer one for the seagoing geeks among us: the "DataMask HUD."

This underwater headgear, which is supposedly used by military special forces personnel, is equipped with a miniature LCD inside the mask, which provides such detailed diving info as "current depth, elapsed dive … Read more