Space Penguin

From News.Com (CNet):

A robotic Lunar Penguin explorer could be hopping around on the moon by 2009, said Raytheon on Tuesday, as it unveiled the concept lander at an aerospace conference.

The unmanned lunar device, in development for two years, is 3 feet tall and weighs approximately 230 pounds. It "hops" by reigniting small propulsion engines.

The Penguin, displayed at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2005 Conference, can make a single jump of about six-tenths of a mile and could be adapted to make additional jumps, possibly over greater distances.

More here from the Arizona Daily Star.

US Army to Use Autonomous Ground Vehicles in Iraq

According to this story in the L.A.Times (registration possibly required -- I can't recall), the US Army is planning on deploying autonomous ground vehicles built by Northrop Grumman (warning: launches Java) in the 4th quarter of this year.

Hoping to reduce human casualties in Iraq, the Army is preparing to use unmanned robotic ground vehicles built by Northrop Grumman Corp. for use in surveillance and border-security missions, the company said Monday.

It would be the first use of autonomous ground vehicles in a combat zone, the Century City-based defense contractor said.

The company's Tactical Amphibious Ground Support vehicle weighs 3,400 pounds, can reach a speed of 25 miles per hour and is about the size of a compact car, with a flatbed top and tank-like treads that can be interchanged with tires.

According to the article, the vehicle is built by Northrop Grumman's Remotec division.

Link via Defense Tech. There's also more info, including pictures and thoughts about who's actually building the thing, at Lemonodor.

Dexterous Robotics at the University of Maryland

Here's a brief collection of activities in dexterous robotics at the Space Systems Lab at the University of Maryland:

• Ranger Satellite Servicing System (overview of projects)
• Ranger Neutral Bouancy Vehicle including a Visual Positioning System
  
• Ranger Telerobtic Shuttle Experiment

Bat Bot

Researchers at the CIRCE (Chiroptera Inspired Robotic CEphaloid) Project are working on a biomimetic sonar head, aka BatBot. Their work includes investigating biosonar antennae (ears) as well as constructing a physical system (pic above) that uses sonar in a bat-like way. From their website:

The goal of CIRCE project is to reproduce, at a functional level, the biosonar system of bats by constructing a bionic bat head that can then be used to systematically investigate how the world is not just perceived but actively explored by bats. This bionic bat head will be of similar size to a real bat head to reproduce the relevant physics and consist of an emission/reception system capable of generating/processing bat vocalizations in real-time, a multi-degree of freedom mechanical system to allow realistic pinnae movement and shape control. Constructing the bionic head itself is one objective but a second objective is to gain more insight into neural sensory-data encoding from using the head in biosonar tasks routinely executed by bats.

Links via Slashdot.

Tiny R/C Airplane Parts

Plantraco makes tiny parts for tiny r/c airplanes, like their 4-gram Butterfly model. Links via Boing Boing.

Not Running Up That Hill

Mars rover Spirit is about 70m (6 vertical meters) from the summit of a hill it's been climbing since the end of last year. The link below's from the BBC; here's more from the JPL.

Robotics at Tyndall AFB

That's a picture of the BomBot (the link is to a description) from the Air Force Research Labs at Tyndall Air Force Base up on the Florida panhandle.

I got e-mail from Tina asking if I knew these folks existed, and I replied that I didn't, but did a quick Google search and came up with this.

Looks like this robotics research is part of the AFRL's Materials and Manufacturing Directorate out of Wright-Patterson.

Finally: The Flying Car

NASA has announced a flying car competition.

Via Autoblog.

Little Autonomous Plane

Some of you got e-mail I sent with a version of this Techology Review article (no wonder I couldn't find it online -- it was under "Information Technology") attached to the e-mail I sent the other day about the little-bitty aircraft that does wall avoidance. Here's more info. Link from Engadget.

2006 Robotics and Automation Conference in Orlando

According to the Call for Papers [HTML] [PDF], papers/posters are due 16 September 2005.

The conference is 15-19 May 2006 at Disney World.

"the flying robotic equivalent to concept cars"

Yes, it's one more from Defense Tech. It highlights (1) a number of big-dream UAVs, and (2) an excerpt from (and pointer to) an Aviation Week analysis of the DoD UAS roadmap.

Flocking

More from Defense Tech:

* Birds of a feather. Getting unmanned aircraft to fly in formation is a challenge that still escapes DARPA scientists, according to Tactical Technology Office program manager Tom Beutner. "Formation flight is an idea we know should work," he says. "We see it even in nature, yet while we routinely use formation flight for tactical advantage, it has never been utilized for the full aerodynamic benefit it offers." Flying in formation allows the aircraft behind the leader to conserve fuel by flying in its slipstream, just like geese do when they fly south for the winter. "Only birds now do this routinely, and they can't explain it to us," he said.

Defense Tech is excerpting from subscription-only sources.

UAV applications

From Defense Tech:

Mike Francis, Darpa's program director for Joint-Unmanned Combat Air Systems, says there might be a couple of commercial applications in the killer drones' underlying algorithms. At the agency's DarpaTech 2005 conference, Francis noted that J-UCAS technology -- including multiple unmanned aircraft (unarmed, of course) and the planes' associated software and ground systems -- could be commercialized for a variety of uses. Inspecting power lines are one possibility. Handling security is another. A third is delivering or tracking UPS or FedEx packages.

DARPA Nano Air Vehicle workshop

Program Proposers' Day on Thursday, September 29, 2005. Details at the link.

DARPA UAS Roadmap

The DARPA Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap is a 200-or-so page guide to where the DOD thinks UAVs are going in the next 25 years.

Found this (and several other of this cluster of links) at Defense Tech.