Engineers Are Building Robotic Fin For Submarines

Inspired by the efficient swimming motion of the bluegill sunfish, MIT researchers are building a mechanical fin that could one day propel robotic submarines.

The propeller-driven submarines, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), currently perform a variety of functions, from mapping the ocean floor to surveying shipwrecks. But the MIT team hopes to create a more maneuverable, propeller-less underwater robot better suited for military tasks such as sweeping mines and inspecting harbors--and for that they are hoping to mimic the action of the bluegill sunfish.

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The age of the superhero suit is upon us

Its rock-hard surface can take a full- on assault from a baseball bat, yet remains flexible enough to allow you to kick, leap and roll with perfect ease. Crafted from cutting-edge science, its unique molecular structure means that while providing armoured protection against crude concrete and even barbed wire, it remains light enough to allow you to run at high speed. It sounds like the stuff of Batman comics - but the superhero suit is here.

Identified as a major breakthrough that could impact on every sector from the military to motor sports, the revolutionary shock-absorbent material d3o is taking the world by storm. Blessed with the kind of properties your average costumed crime fighter would kill for, it is being hailed as an invention with the potential to change entire industries and save real lives.

In a nutshell, d3o is an advanced polymer with an intelligent molecular structure that flows with you as you move but, when shocked, locks together to become rigid enough to absorb impact energy. In its simplest form, it is like an automatic knee-pad that can be sown seamlessly into a pair of jeans."

At the moment a complete superhero suit made of our material would be a bit too heavy and far too expensive, but those challenges should be overcome within the next few years."

Today the material is fast becoming a common component of cutting-edge protective equipment, with the d3o brand beginning to feature in a range of winter and motor sports products worldwide. It has been adopted enthusiastically by the likes of US Olympic ski team, the four-times Everest climber Kenton Cool and Olympic cyclist Craig McClean.

Source: Spluch

Unmanned "Surge": 3000 More Robots for War

U.S. military robots ran 30,000 missions in 2006 -- hunting for, and getting rid of, improvised explosives.

Now, the military has launched a crash project to radically increase its unmanned ground forces. Call it the robotic equivalent of the "surge."

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Robo-Cars Picked for Pentagon Driving Test

36 teams are moving on to the semi-finals of the Urban Challenge, the Pentagon's contest to see if robotic cars can move their way through cities.

That includes all five teams that completed 2005's Grand Challenge driverless rally across the desert.

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Robot vehicles take on tough jobs

Got a destination too dirty or dangerous for a person to want to go there? The day could soon come when a robot vehicle takes humans' place as a matter of course.

Scientists are focused on developing unmanned machines that can operate in the air, on the ground and under water, doing jobs where deploying people is just too dangerous.

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China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

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Homeland Security tests automated "Hostile Intent" detector

An uncomfortable fact of modern security is that too many people go through transit hubs and to public events for all of them to be screened both efficiently and thoroughly. As a result, there has been a lot of attention focused on producing automated systems that screen crowds without the need for human intervention.

Automated biometric scans have serious limits, however, in that they can only identify people who have already been classified as threats. The Department of Homeland Security is hoping to overcome that limitation by automating the identification of individuals whose behavior suggests they pose a threat via a program dubbed "Hostile Intent."

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