Subject: rather normal press release from our friends over at iRobot, whose home page famously offers the simply surreal choice: * Cleaning Robots * Tactical Robots

The PR runs thus:

iRobot Receives U.S. Military Orders

BURLINGTON, Mass., July 11, 2007: iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ: IRBT) today announced it has received two delivery orders totaling $17.5 million for iRobot PackBot robots for the U.S. military.

The U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), on behalf of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) both placed orders for iRobot’s combat-proven military robots.

iRobot expects to complete delivery by the end of January 2008."

Then, in the delightful spirit of the afore-mentioned home-page incertitude, one imagines playful irony curl his lips, lighting his eyes with a deep and mischievous twinkle, as Vice Admiral Joe Dyer (U.S. Navy, Ret.), president of iRobot Government and Industrial Robots, announces:

We will continue our efforts to improve our battle-proven technologies with innovations like PackBot’s new game-style hand controller, which takes advantage of hours of training our young men and women have logged with computer games, making them pre-trained PackBot operators.

Ok, Joe. That’s reason enough for me to trot out this iconic 40 y/o classic cartoon comment by Ron Cobb (for which no excuse is too weak :0).

Hmm, another thunk. It strikes me, in cliche mind set, that cleaning robots target middle and upper class precincts, whilst tactical bots are surely the preferred choice for crime-ridden burbs.

Dang, did I say that out loud?

 Bear with me. I like to talk around the subject.

Vecna Robotics is interesting. Parent company has fingers in enterprise automation, health-care IT, and bleeding edge research, like RFID, bioinformatics and our old mate, AI.

Vecna’s robotics ‘arm,’ is, well, two arms and some tractor treads hanging off a PR ploy resembling a bear’s head - but only after the brochure explains it.

Hence, too, the importance of a nicely concocted acronym: "Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot.." Oh well, it’s all good marketing fun, can’t pick on them for that.

"The robot’s humanoid body and teddy bear-style head give it a friendly appearance." 

[ I tell ya, Sarg, thet 'bot looks jest like the mother what shot me! ]

"A really important thing when you’re dealing with casualties is trying to maintain that human touch,"

.. says the US army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Centre in Frederick, Maryland. Hmm, nice sentiment, yet with the clang of incongruity. One ponders, after all, what led to casualties in the first place. Anyhoo, where’s the human touch being dragged by the feet through mud by two buddies under fire?

As well you know, I, Dextre, Celebrity Robot (I must keep reminding you, as I’ve heard your memories can fade) am always seeking the hidden truth - aka the ‘back angle’ - and it doesn’t take much reading of Vecna’s sparse web pages on bearbot to reveal the usual suspect, your human agenda:

Although rescuing injured soldiers will be its most important role, Bear’s work will also include mundane tasks such as loading trucks and carrying equipment for soldiers.

The robot will be an integral part of a military team.

Yeah, riiight.

Two other tandem uses for this type of robot loom as massive growth areas.

Vecna proposes the SCI-bear for handling spinal cord injury patient who need steady rotisserie work to forestall pressure ulcers. Immediately one sees all kinds of patient handling as prime territory for robotic people lifters.

Second, the HOMEbear is aimed at similar populations of incapacitated folk struggling at home. Such strugglers will have to bear five years of difficulty for refining the bare technology, more time while the military soak up initial production, then finally stump up the traditional coupla-hundred G’s for one’s personal BearBot.

Normal course of technological dev., not Vecna’s fault.

A final puzzling note. Whilst applauding Vecna’s social spirit (paying 10% of employees time for community projects) I am perplexed at this odd request for donations on the page promoting their military-funded robotics.

Victory first requires deciphering enemy acronyms (DEAs)

Slogans, buzzwords, and acronyms, are essentials of any complex system - denoting a rich culture amongst its cognoscenti - and the military are no slouches in the jargon game.

US Army think-tanks have escalated themselves to leaders of the pack in this skill. In so doing, the common soldier, the human, becomes so abstractly defined as to be indistinguishable from a deployed bipedal field unit, umm, biorobot, err.., cyborg - heck, let the experts speak:

All Soldiers in the Modular Force are part of the Soldier as a System (SaaS) overarching requirement encompassing everything the Soldier wears, carries, and consumes to include unit radios, crew-served weapons, and unit-specific equipment in the execution of tasks and duties.

All Soldiers systems will be treated as an integrated System of Systems (SoS). The Future Combat Systems (FCS) Soldier, as defined by Soldier as a System (SaaS), meets the need to improve the current capability of all Soldiers, regardless of Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), to perform Army Common Tasks and functions more efficiently and effectively.

The "FCS" itself is a glorious acronym-rich obfuscation (ARO) describing a refined system of destruction and killing (RSDK) - preferably of carbon-based units (CBUs), but their techno-lackeys (TLs) can be taken down if robo-jacking (RoJ) proves cost-ineffective (-$).

The Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) network allows the FCS Family-of-Systems (FoS) to operate as a cohesive system-of-systems where the whole of its capabilities is greater than the sum of its parts.

As the key to the Army’s transformation, the network, and its logistics and Embedded Training (ET) systems, enable the Future Force to employ revolutionary operational and organizational concepts. The network enables Soldiers to perceive, comprehend, shape, and dominate the future battlefield at unprecedented levels as defined by the FCS Operational Requirements Document (ORD).

Link to milbot central. PS: Don’t forget to download the wargame. And if you are wondering what on Earth the US Army is up to, try this article on ‘dumbing down the army.’

Outside the robotics community, even amongst car enthusiasts, the DARPA Grand Challenge is - like so many social and technological watersheds - simply unheard of!

Is that you now asking: "So what is it?"

A United States government-sponsored competition that aims to create the first fully autonomous vehicles capable of competing on an under-300 mile, off-road course in the Mojave Desert in the Southwest United States.

The point of it? Not the advance of humanity, or the nobility of scientific challenge. Rather, to facilitate robotic development with the goal of making one third of ground military forces automated by 2015. Sigh! (Still, that’s roughly how the Internet began)

The most exciting dimension of the DARPA Grand Challenge is not who won, how, how fast, or the prize money, but comparing the RESULTS with the year before (2004).

The 2005 Grand Challenge winner completed the 132-mile race in 6 hours 53 minutes and 58 seconds. Four other vehicles succeeded within the 10 hour limit.

All but one of 23 finalists in the 2005 race passed the 7.36 mile distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race.

That’s for taking notice of.