Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

rescue

Photos: Robots to the rescue

Robots with names like Eyeball, Dragon Runner, ToughBot, Marv, Matilda and Talon fearlessly rolled and hovered over wreckage and rubble last week in Disaster City, a 52-acre training center for first responders and emergency workers.

Last week's robotics exercise, the fourth in two years sponsored by the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the Commerce Department, has a complex task: finding ways of evaluating performance of robots so that they can be fairly compared, according to The New York Times.

This bot would feel at home in the jungle

Now this is our kind of robot. If you're going to go the droid route, we figure, don't mess around with the type of sissy-bots that are so prevalent these days--go for the brute factor instead.

That's why we like the "Ellos RescueBot," which Gearfuse describes as a "damage-resistant" machine designed to go where humans can't in emergencies. Its description makes it sound more like something from the Amazon (the river, not the store) than a piece of robotics: "Its main standout feature is 10 lifting arms on its bottom. When … Read more