Surveillance has been power boosted to a new level.
Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratory has developed a “spybot”. Ieee spectrum inside technology has the scoop.
Lockheed’s new robotic creation knows how to operate incognito around humans. It actually listens for humans, guesses where they might be looking and then finds itself a hiding spot.
How can it be so sneaky, you ask? It is equipped with a 3D laser scanner. It also has an array of acoustic sensors that allow it to localize footsteps and voices.
Lockheed Martin’s robot is not the first of its kind; however, it is on technology’s cutting edge. Georgia Tech also created a “spybot” , which uses deliberately deceptive tactics to fool other robots and humans.
Is covert robotics now emerging as power field of engineering? This technology is unique because these robots can build a computer program of their surrounding s, incorporating information on line of sight so that it can covertly map its environment in 3D.
According to NewScientist.com , Brian Satterfield, lead engineer, stated that the robot was designed to operate within four constraints: “ Avoiding visible detection by sentries of known locations, avoiding potential detection by sentries whose positions were unknown, avoiding areas in which the robot would have no means of escape and as this robot was designed to run at night, avoiding areas that were well lit”
Video of spybot:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI9__hLgnZk[/youtube]