sugv
Latest
Boeing, iRobot team to develop PackBot replacement, the SUGV Early
We spotted the SUGV peeking out behind the curtain last year as iRobot introduced the Warrior, and now we've got the lowdown, as Boeing and iRobot this week announced a partnership bringing together iRobot's non-vacuum skills and Boeing's penchant for sci-fi warfare. The two companies are collaborating on the replacement for iRobot's extremely successful Packbot, which has performed thousands of dangerous missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the PackBot, the 30-pound SUGV Early can be deployed by a single soldier and features a video camera, infrared sensors, and enough smarts to navigate most obstacles semi-autonomously. Naturally, iRobot will be in charge of most of the design work, while Boeing is being tapped for its vast experience with systems integration, mass production, and global marketing. As a result of this partnership, the SUGV should be rolling out in 2008, with full-scale deployment in 2010. No plans are being made to weaponize these 'bots (yet), but what we really want to know is when iRobot is just going to to go all the way and start cranking out Johnny Five clones.
iRobot poised to unveil Warrior and SUGV military bots
iRobot is kind of a strange company. It seems like half the engineering team is hard at work on helpful little slavebots -- Roomba, Scooba, and the new Dirt Dog -- that aid common folk with their domestic chores, while the other half has seen Terminator one too many times and is all about building autonomous military vehicles that can be weaponized and transformed into killbots. Case in point is the new 250-pound Warrior (pictured above), formerly known as the NEOmover, which will officially be unveiled next week at the U.S. Army Annual Meeting & Exposition (it's like CES, except everyone is packing heat and telling glorified war stories). Initially Warrior -- along with another new bot, the 30-pound Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (or SUGV, pictured after the break) -- will be tasked with duties to similar to their predecessor, the PackBot: hauling around gear for troops, scouting out potentially dangerous locations, and sacrificing their young lives by literally jumping on the grenade (or land mine, or IED). However, Robot Stock News reports that iRobot Chairperson Helen Grenier has already discussed outfitting the mechanized fleet with guns and missiles, allowing them to mow down the enemy in between more humanitarian work like firefighting and battlefield extraction. Now we would never suggest that technology capable of keeping our soldiers out of harm's way should be discouraged, but we've seen Robocop one too many times and know what can happen when you strap heavy artillery onto an angry robot. Anyway, here's to hoping that by the time these bots get all decked out with machine guns and RPGs, the only enemy "troops" they'll ever face are the kind that South Korea is on the verge of deploying -- with robots fighting robots, everyone wins.[Via GoRobotics]
