DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) wants to develop an initiative to build a robotic hand which imitates the gestures of a human hand. Robert Mandelbaum, a manager at DARPA, explained that the research agency and robotics communities in recent years have focused on robots which mo…
I'm constantly reminded of my shortcomings as a blogger, especially with this story, as I don't think I've ever posted about Vecna's BEAR, or Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot. Regardless, the BEAR is a "humanoid" (well, it has a face and arms) robot that is designed to lift, carry, and extract…
 Robotic Technology Inc. is working on a robot that is powered by biomass - grass, wood, or even dead bodies. The steam powered robot, which is being developed for the Pentagon under a Phase II SBIR grant, is designed for fuel itself off materials in its environment. While the title, "... cou
 General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled it's latest version of the wildly popular Predator Drone - the Predator C Avenger. The Avenger, which made its first flight tests earlier this month, is expected to be a viable product within 10 - 12 months, and could be patrolling the un
Boeing reported today that it has successfully destroyed several flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using a laser weapon mounted on a truck. The weapon was mounted to an Avenger Air Defense vehicle, which normally uses surface-to-air missiles for attacks. The successful test involved the Laser…
 If anyone doubted the US Air Force's commitment to unmanned (read: robots) aircraft, you won't after you hear this: The Air Force plans on acquiring more unmanned than manned aircraft next year. That's a pretty amazing statistic, and amounts to billions of dollars of potential new busine
We've reported on such matter before, but once again a US Military drone (robot) has successfully fired on and killed at least 5 militants (terrorists) on the Pakistani border. It's great to hear that the "bad guys" are getting the due, and that US soldiers are being kept from harm by our roboti…
A couple interesting submarine launched UAVs, one by Raytheon and another, VOLANS, built by a German company, are featured in this Register article. The Submarine Over the Horizon Organic Capabilities, or SOTHOC, built by Raytheon, is launched out of the waste disposal lock of a sub…
The US Army has decided to move it's Robotics Systems Joint Project Office to Warren, MI, outside of Detroit. In response to this, many large robotics companies are following suit and opening offices in the area. The office is currently hiring engineers and designers to create robots to do “d
 In what is pretty stunning news to me, iRobot has purchased Nekton Research for $10 million USD. The reason this is so stunning, is because Nekton is 30min down the road from me, and I've interviewed there! Nekton is a small business located in Durham North Carolina and specializes in unde
Chris Anderson, over at DIY Drones, recently posted a full page advertisement, from the July edition of the AUVSI magazine, for AUS International’s AirSniper product. The AirSniper is described as, “a VTOL combat mini UAV intended for close infantry support.†Or, in other word
You may remember our posts on the sad plight of iRobot, who had accused their ex-employee, Jameel Ahed, of stealing their design, only to have the US Military award a whopping $280 million dollar contract to said ex-employee, and rejecting iRobot. Oh the injustice! Weep no more, fellow shareh…
The US Department of Defense (DoD) has released a report detailing the future of robotic military equipment and how the US military should proceed. The 188 page report (pdf) covers the next 25 years of unmanned military systems in the air, and sea, and on land. “The publication of this mos…
The world for terrorists and evil-doers just keeps getting scaier and scaier. First it was Predator drones with helfire missiles , then it was PackBots that can fire at 1,000,000 rounds/minute (more on this later), and now it's tiny flying vehicles with on-board cameras. Oh, did I mention they're t…
In what was a stunning blow to iRobot and its investors, the US Army rejected the company in a high-stakes big for a large order of bomb-detection and tactical robots (Forbes story here). iRobot, the favorite to win the bidding, offered its PackBot robots as the product of choice to meet the de…
A Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle has flown its first ever mission over the USA. This past Monday the robot landed at Beale Air Force Base in California, after completing its unstated mission. "This landmark flight has historic implications since it's the first time a Global Hawk has …