Planetary Gear

The U.S. military has been working on a new use for old PackBots that will save soldiers time and aggravation, though not replace them completely, when it comes to chemical warfare.

A CUGV PackBot at the 95th Chemical Company at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

(Credit: U.S. Army Alaska)

With new Foster-Miller Talon and 510 PackBot models being introduced, the old PackBot models will be rotated out of use in combat.

The Department of Defense ordered that the older models be put to good use. Through a program towards that end, the 95th Chemical Company at Fort Richardson in Alaska has been testing out modded PackBots since 2005.

The new/old PackBot, called a Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Unmanned Ground Vehicle or CUGV for short, will be ready for field use this fall, according to the U.S. Army.

It's been fitted with a lightweight chemical detector to sense nerve gas, among other things.

"The CUGV detects ammonia, chlorine, carbon monoxide, oxygen levels, lower explosive limits, volatile organic compounds, gamma radiation rate and dose rate, temperature, and humidity," Herschel J. Deaton, CBRN programs technical staff for Concurrent Technologies Corp. at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said in an Army News Service story.

It's also fitted with a video camera for live feeds that can be taped by the person controlling the robot back at operations for analysis at a later time.

Soldiers from the 95th Chemical Company set up a robot control station.

(Credit: U.S. Army Alaska)

In the absence of a CUGV, a soldier has to wear a Level A airtight suit and self-contained breathing apparatus akin to scuba gear when going into a suspected contaminated zone. Because of the heat and the oxygen limitations in such a suit, he or she only had about 45 minutes to get to the site, inspect it, and get back to a safe area.

The iRobot PackBot can be sent in to a contamination zone for up to 4 hours if necessary, according to the Army report.

Unfortunately, the CUGV can not entirely replace the soldier. Since it cannot take a sample of water, dirt, or vegetation to be brought back to a lab, a human will still have to go in for that.

But the PackBot will still alleviate a lot of the time-consuming legwork leading up to that task by mapping out and identifying the contaminates in a given area, according to the Army report.

Knowing what kind of contaminate is in the area would also help keep soldiers from needless donning of the Level A suit.

In addition to an expected increase in sales to the U.S. military, iRobot says it will see growth in its unmanned robot platforms from foreign buyers.

iRobot's Warrior robot can be modified to support chemical sensor devices or functioning weapons.

(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)

The "Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032," a report put out by the Department of Defense last year, outlined a strategy to increase spending in unmanned technology for the air, sea, and ground.

iRobot, which has already been supplying the U.S. military with unmanned robots for use in ground reconnaissance and combat, has repeatedly said it will benefit from the military's increased need.

But the company now says that as its robots have proven themselves useful in Iraq and Afghanistan, interest from foreign armed forces has also increased.

iRobot has sold robots from its line of unmanned military drones internationally to 13 allied countries, including Australia, Gemany, Israel, and the United Kingdom, since 2006, Joe Dyer, president of iRobot's Government & Industrial Robots division, told reporters in a Web conference Wednesday.

The international market consisted of only a handful of robots sold in 2006, but about 8 percent or 9 percent of iRobot's total revenue for unmanned robots in 2007. This year, iRobot estimates that its foreign market will increase to about 15 percent of its total revenues for its government and industrial division, according to Dyer.

But how do export license approvals work when a company is a supplier of dual-use technology to the U.S. military? Admittedly, iRobot's unmanned platforms are just as suited to benign first-responder search-and-rescue functions as they are to lethal combat. But either way you look at it, iRobot is still selling hardware with high-tech military capability to foreign entities.

"It's on a country-by-country basis. If country X desires to purchase iRobot robots, we take it to (the State Department) for approval. If we receive it, we proceed," Dyer said.