Admin

By David Szondy

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The arrest of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was carried out, in part, with the help of a remote controlled robot. Such an operation highlights the growing uses of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) in anti-terrorist and other operations. Northrop Grumman Corporation’s CUTLASS robot, developed by its division in Coventry, U.K. is designed to provide remote handling and surveillance of hazardous threats and is intended to replace British Army’s Wheelbarrow robot for bomb disposal.

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Demoed in 2007, the CUTLASS boasts a modular design with a three-fingered gripper at the end of a manipulator arm which is engineered for nine degrees of freedom to allow it to operate in tight spots, such as a car interior. It's equipped with six wheels that can carry it over soft and hard terrain in all weather conditions and allow it to creep along at slow speeds for delicate operations or travel at up to 12 km/h (7.4 mph) when speed is required.

Northrop Grumman claims that its ability to accommodate a wide range of payloads, sensors and tools to suit multiple missions allows CUTLASS to operate without the need for a second robot, providing savings of 50 percent when compared to maintaining and operating two separate UGVs over the life of the vehicle.

It also means that CUTLASS can get the job done without having to return to the incident control point for additional tools during operations. The company says this results in a vehicle that can deal with hazardous situation up to four times quicker than other UGVs.

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"[The CUTLASS] is more dexterous, cost effective and, as a package, four times faster than any other UGV," said Greg Roberts, managing director, defence and security, Northrop Grumman Information Systems Europe. "The vehicle is already in service across the U.K. and has proven itself to be robust and capable in the most demanding environments. We look forward to exploiting the potential opportunities for exporting this capability into international markets."

The CUTLASS will be exhibited at the Counter Terror Expo that will be at the National Hall, Olympia, London, April 24-25.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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Comments

  • T3

    For those who still doesn't get a clue, this thing costs as much as annual production of DIY autopilots.

    Now tell me this is even comparable to annual activity of DIYDRONES.

  • T3

    For me, a definition of impressive achievement is a ratio of achievement/expenses.

    Here, expenses are pro grade and VERY high, counting millions paid every year for a group reasearchers. Therefore, inevitably, it is unimpressive since it is not even Mars robot that has just returned.

  • @ Krzysztof,

    Not quite sure why we're getting all wound up here.  

     

    "it is not even impressive to post it here"

    For the record, I'm impressed.

    They demoed a very old robot like this at our highschool last year and it was pretty cool. It was old and slow, but they'd been upgrading it and progressively giving it some autonomy and speed. It's impressive to see how far things have come in the past few years. 

    "would explode everybody's budget"

    Pretty sure one could build a good ground vehicle for the price of half of the multirotors and aircraft featured on here. 

     

    You may want to check out FRC, First Robotics Competition. 100% ground vehicles, 100% problem solving. And there's a good part of it that is completely autonomous. Very, very impressive stuff.

     - Muhammad. 

  • T3

    Hi,

    Airplanes were elitary over rovers and civilian was more scarce than civilian UAV.

    Therefore we are protecting things that are flying and unmanned and civilian - this is how it was 2 years ago.

    I could easily post 50 Polish projects with rovers (every single university) vs 2 on unmanned baloons and 2 with airplane autopilot. See the ratio?

    You want to go mainstream? Why not to post every FPV event? Then RC flying contest?

    I am not offending FPV nor RC. I am reminding why this site was created.

    The machine you have indicated was purposely designed with serious arms funding - therefore not DIY, and not even civilian. Lifesaving? So what. Atomic bomb saved thousand US lives, right? No go create peaceful DIY site about making bombs. The machine you have posted, once made in DIY way, would explode everybody's budget so it is not even impressive to post it here. Yes you can it that way but the question is: what you can create with personal budget, without intent of regular service. You will find those things are very scarce, while regular robot for bomb disposal is not.

    Regards,

    KB

  • Admin

    @Krzysztof Bosak,

    The DIY Drones website is dedicated to planes, multicopters, and yes, rovers ("ground robots"). Take a look at the new header. Do you see an ArduRover (("ground robots") on the right side of header?

    Do you see a weapon on this drone? This can be used as a civilian drone to be used for civilian purposes such as bomb disposal and suspect apprehension.

    Regards,

    TCIII

  • T3

    I think this is

    1. unrelated to flying robots, whiel ground robots are much more popular and would flood this site easily

    2.historically all military UAVs were banned here, for similar reasons.

  • Admin

    The civilian version of these kinds of robots will undoubtedly save a lot of police and emergency worker's lives in the dangerous future that we all face.

    Regards,

    TCIII

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