Pretty cool RC for our soldiers

[KenP]

In the paper today:

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories...123&ran=159725

Cliff's Notes version

Beach company creates small robots to combat IEDs

By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot
? September 18, 2006

VIRGINIA BEACH ? The remote-controlled robot looks like an off-the-shelf monster truck on steroids. It climbs street curbs with ease, hurdles speed bumps, hits 35 mph and runs for hours on a single battery charge.

But this high-tech machine, with a price tag of nearly $10,000, is no plaything, says its maker, Applied Marine Technology Inc.
It?s for deadly serious business.

About three years ago, AMTI became one of the first private contractors to enlist in the effort to counter improvised explosive devices.

Founded in 1991, the company is heavy in retired military with backgrounds in special operations forces. Tapping into that expertise, the company has developed a niche in offering solutions in homeland security and the war on terror, working with military, law enforcement and industry clients.

AMTI?s solution: an off-the-shelf remote-controlled Traxxas truck, which retails for about $400.

The company?s engineers, who surveyed dozens of commercial products, found the Traxxas platform to be reliable. T hey replaced plastic parts with metal and aluminum, installed heavy-duty shocks, attached monitoring cameras and added a tray to carry explosives to blow up suspicious objects from several hundred feet away.

About 2,000 of those earlier robots, the R-421, have been purchased by the Defense Department and deployed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, company officials said.

Based on lessons from the field, AMTI plans to start production this month on the R-500 ? the latest version in its ?Seeker Series? robots.

The new version is beefier, has more than three times the range and is equipped with a detachable trailer to deliver explosives. Only about 20 percent of the robot is off-the-shelf stock parts.

?It?s far from a toy,? said Bud Fultz, vice president of AMTI?s Technical Solutions Group. ?This can save lives. We know the predecessor robots have saved lives.?

The R-500 is equipped with two cameras ? known in the trade as optical sensors ? that allow troops to send the robot on reconnaissance and surveillance missions. The wireless robot has a range of about 1,000 feet, enabling its handlers to examine suspicious roadside objects or inspect buildings from a safe distance.

One of the cameras is fixed-view and forward-facing, used to drive the robot. The other is a pan-and-tilt camera that rotates 360 degrees horizontally and has a vertical scan of 180 degrees. Headlights and camera spotlights are attached for nighttime missions.

The older R-421, which sells for about $3,700, was designed to be disposable. However, t roops in the field ? worried that they wouldn?t get replacements because of tight budgets ? were jury-rigging the robots to avoid destroying them when blowing up roadside bombs. That included tying explosives to the end of a broom handle attached to the robot.

That led AMTI to design a detachable trailer to deploy explosives, making the R-500 reusable and a better buy, Fultz said ? even though it has a higher up-front cost

[deserth3]

SWEET!!

[DDWH]

Very cool!