RINF.COM: THE BREAKING NEWS ALTERNATIVE

Friday, May 9th, 2008 | 755 Users Browsing The Newswire
Breaking News | Forum | UK News | USA News | World News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage
BREAKING NEWS
NEW RINF FORUM!

English village to be invaded in spybot competition

Monday, May 5th, 2008

village.jpgBy Ceri Perkins  | A village in south-west England will shortly be swarming with robots competing to show off their surveillance skills. The event is the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) answer to the US DARPA Grand Challenge that set robotic cars against one another to encourage advances in autonomous vehicles.

The MoD Grand Challenge is instead designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas.

Over 10 days in August, 11 teams of robots will compete to locate and identify four different threats hidden around a mock East German village used for urban warfare training, at Copehill Down, Wiltshire (see image, top right).

The robots must find snipers, armed vehicles, armed foot soldiers, and improvised explosive devices hidden around the village, and relay a real-time picture of what is happening back to a command post.

Urban hazards

The robots will need to negotiate the complexity of an urban environment to find the threats. Hazards include unfamiliar terrain and buildings, trees, near-invisible overhead wires and other urban clutter.

Teams will earn points based on how many threats they locate in one hour, and how autonomous they are. For example, a team will lose points if they use remote control to direct their vehicles at any stage of the trial.

The teams that score highest will be rewarded with the potential of a lucrative contract with the MoD, which hopes to see the best ideas rapidly developed to the point they can be deployed by UK forces in places such as Afghanistan and southern Iraq.

“We are in no doubt that this is a difficult challenge,” says Grand Challenge programme leader, Andy Wallace.

Software control

Of the 23 initial entries from teams made up of private companies and universities, 11 were selected to take part in the final, with six thought promising enough to receive MoD funding.

One funded team, the Stellar Consortium, uses two aerial robots and one ground-based one.

A 3m wing-span unmanned air vehicle (UAV) will fly 65 metres above the village and use cameras to gather wide-area surveillance used by software to direct a smaller, 1m UAV flying at 20 metres, and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), (see image, middle right).

Those two vehicles use thermal, visual, and radar sensors to make more detailed observations that can be reported back to the base station.

“Physically, the vehicles all have to be launched by someone,” explains Julia Richardson, Director of Stellar Research, “but after that, the mission-planning software hosted at the ground station takes full control.”

Owl swarm

A team called Swarm Systems uses more robots. “We need to gather as much sensory information as possible,” says team leader Stephen Crampton, “so we’re using eight vehicles. And we’re going by air because it gives you more viewing angles.”

Dubbed “Owls”, their battery-powered, Frisbee-sized vehicles weigh under a kilogram and have four small propellers (see image, right). Able to hover and dart like birds, they are GPS-guided and communicate with one another, and the base station, using Wi-Fi. Each Owl carries a trio of 5 megapixel cameras.

“Without giving too much away, the processing power on board each of these vehicles is pretty impressive,” adds Crampton. “They could run full-blown Windows Vista.”

User-friendly tech

A third team, Silicon Valley, has opted to rely less heavily on autonomous vehicles. They have used off-the-shelf technology for the hardware as much as possible, and focused more development onto image recognition and analysis software.

“If you can automate that part, then you have a useful tool,” explains team leader, Norman Gregory. “What we intend to do is deploy various platforms, depending on what the scenario is.”

The team will use a mixture of ground and air-based vehicles, although the team is not yet releasing the exact details. The main ground vehicle is the size of a ride-on lawnmower (see image, bottom right) and can be GPS-guided or remotely directed by a human.

See More: 

Have Your Say: English village to be invaded in spybot competition
Please note, only selected comments will be published.

Or discuss this report in our our new forums

RSS TrackBack URL

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 4:03 am and is filed under Science & Technology News, General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Translations
Translate to EnglishÜbersetzen Sie zum Deutsch/GermanПереведите к русскому/RussianΜεταφράστε στα ελληνικά/GreekVertaal aan het Nederlands/Dutchترجمة الى العربية/Arabic中文翻译/Chinese Traditional中文翻译/Chinese Simplified한국어에게 번역하십시오/Korean日本語に翻訳しなさい /JapaneseTraduza ao Português/PortugueseTraduca ad Italiano/ItalianTraduisez au Français/FrenchTraduzca al Español/Spanish Free Newsletter

Related News

Network This Report

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Slashdot
  • Reddit
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Spurl
  • Fark
  • Netscape

Email This Page To A Friend
Latest Headlines

Archive
TOP NEWS DISCUSSIONS
LATEST NEWS DISCUSSIONS
LATEST FORUM TOPICS
The Surveillance Society Does Not Work

US Navy Deploys Around Latin America

Iran rejects nuclear inspections unless Israel allows them

The Pentagon vs. America

Iraq 'Divide and Rule' Strategy Called Shortsighted

UN suspends aid flights after Burma impounds food

Does Organic Really Mean Organic?

The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

The New Whopper: Burger with a Side of Spies

Abuse Claims Mount Against Pentagon, Contractors

Report: U.S. Not as 'Free' as Touted

BBC kept £106,000 of charity cash

Bush backs modified crops

Brian Haw Arrested Again - SOCPA

Sam Gillespie commented on:
Tasers don’t reduce shootings
I guess the 18 dead fellow Canadians killed by tasers won’t get to read this article. It...
Continue Reading & Reply

whistler commented on:
UN suspends aid flights after Burma impounds food
Here is the perfect opportunity for the USA and coalition to use its power for the...
Continue Reading & Reply

whistler commented on:
Does Organic Really Mean Organic?
ORGANICS our only chance of survival.
Continue Reading & Reply

Paul Blackburn commented on:
BBC kept £106,000 of charity cash
If the BBC want to be trusted they should first reveal the source for their bewildering report on...
Continue Reading & Reply

Blackwater: US government's private army
Here is a short five minute video about Blackwater. […]
Thread Started By: toeg

Shahaib Akhtar.
I rate him as the most controversial cricketer,he. […]
Thread Started By: sanju123

Checking your mail.
How many times you guys check your mail in a week,. […]
Thread Started By: sanju123

The hottest hero !!
Well which of the heroes you think is the hottest,. […]
Thread Started By: sanju123

Bed time stories.
How many have you enjoyed and how many of you rela. […]
Thread Started By: sanju123

Scanning corpses reveals killer's fingerprints
The corpses of murder victims could betray the ide. […]
Thread Started By: Nostalgia


Activism & Protest News | Business News | Civil & Human Rights News | Environmental News | Media News | Globalisation News | Web Development News
ADVERTISEMENTS
SITE MAPS
WOWEB - Web Design

FAST GATEWAY - Web Hosting

INFOTX - Web Hosting Guides and Resources


ASHLEY GUEST HOUSE - Morecambe Guest House

Never Be Lied To Again!

Subliminal Secrets Exposed

Holographic Creation: Your Own Reality


Masonic Secrets Revealed


What You Aren't Supposed To Know
7/7 Afghanistan Alternative Energy Art BBC Big Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CIA Climate Change Cover Up Cults Culture Database State David Hicks David Ray Griffin Democrats Demos Drugs Education EU False Flag FBI Fraud Free Speech Freemasons G8 Globalization Guantanamo Health News History ID Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel Law Marches MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police State Propaganda RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Secrecy Security Space Sports Spying Stephen Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony Blair Torture TV UK News UN USA News Video Voting Warfare White House Wolfowitz World News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version
About | DVD Store | Opinion | Reviews | Special Guests | Webmasters
The views expressed in the RINF news wire and newsletter are the sole responsibility of the author (s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the webmaster.
RINF.COM: Breaking News & Alternative Media is Copyleft - Copy & Distribute Freely. News Forum