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Believe it or not, Rufus Terrill, owner of a downtown Atlanta bar named O'Terrills, has had it with the drug dealers, vandals, and other riff-raff that frequent the area around his business. So, he has done what any sane American man would do in this situation—build a robot out of a meat smoker to lay down the law. The "BumBot," as many of O'Terrills' patrons have dubbed it, is basically a meat smoker mounted onto a three-wheeled scooter. Armaments include a spotlight, loudspeaker, water cannon and an infrared camera. Plus, the whole thing is covered in rubber for protection. When...

Super Soldiers Coming to a War Near You Super Soldiers may not be something only seen in sci-fi movies. The U.S. Army is developing--in conjunction with a Salt Lake City robotics company, Sarkos--technology to turn a 98-pound weakling into a Superman. "The future is now" was the motto of George Allen, of LA Rams and Washington Redskins fame. It might just as well be the motto of the U.S. Army. Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds—that is, until he...

We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday." SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction...

U.S. military develops Robocop armour for soldiers By MATTHEW HICKLEY, Defence Correspondent 22:21pm on 9th April 2007 We may have seen it all before in science-fiction films. But the bionic warrior is in fact a vision of real-life warfare in the 21st century. U.S. defence chiefs hope to have their troops kitted out in the outlandish combat gear as soon as 2020. Included in the Pentagon's Future Warrior Concept are a powerful exoskeleton, a self-camouflaging outer layer that adapts to changing environments and a helmet which translates a soldier's voice into any foreign language. Armour-clad and armed to the teeth,...

Samsung's Techwin division will shortly begin selling heavily armed robot sentries that can identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles away. The Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot was jointly developed with a South Korean university, and is designed to replace some of the troops guarding the border with North Korea. The robot will be available next year at a cost of $200,000 per unit, and the company expects to sell 1,000 in the first year. "The gist of this project is to transform the current guard and observation mission on fronts conducted by soldiers into a robot...

<p>A man was beating a 16-year-old girl with a pipe Wednesday morning on Detroit's west side.</p> <p>Suddenly, the man was dead, shot several times by a passenger in a passing car.</p> <p>Police are looking for the driver of the car and the gunman, who might not be a criminal suspect, but a much rarer species -- a drive-by vigilante.</p>

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