R2D2 is no longer the happy little diplomatic robot of yesteryear but a honking great space age cannon
US Navy brings down drone with LaWS raygun | News.com.au

That has nothing to do with the Star Wars robot.

This is the year of the Bots

The military has Bots killing jihadists and now they have anti-bot technology . There is a bot at the bottom of the Gulf attempting to free a diamond blade from a pipe (they just successfully cut the pipe with gigantic bot sheers .

The Ruskies launched a bot to Mars ;the Japanese to Venus .They have another bot limping back to earth after it had a close encounter with an asteroid .

The Rover bot Opportunity just set a longevity record on Mars ;still going strong after 2,247 "sols," even though it was designed to only go 90.

Back to R2D2 .

Since the world doesn't have the fortitude to prevent proliferation of nukes by rogues ;then an effective anti-missile system needs to be built and deployed .

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Originally Posted by NeedKarma

That has nothing to do with the Star Wars robot.

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The "Phalanx" turret this LaWS weapon is mounted on was nicknamed for the Star Wars character.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-Hyuuga_05.JPG

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Originally Posted by tomder55

Back to R2D2 .

Since the world doesn't have the fortitude to prevent proliferation of nukes by rogues ;then an effective anti-missile system needs to be built and deployed .

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Don't see what this has to do with nukes, I'm just commenting on the lack of originality in naming things but life is imitating art and yes we would like an effective anti missile system but undoubtedly it will lead to a new family of deadly weapons. Once you have a ray gun big enough you don't need the blunt force of a nuke when a surgical strike will do the same job

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Don't see what this has to do with nukes, I'm just commenting on the lack of originality in naming things...

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What, it doesn't look like R2D2? I thought it was clever.

More bots :
The University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab is developing micro unmanned
Air Vehicles (micro-UAVs)small enough to fit in the palm of your hand fitted with sensors that can penetrate deep inside buildings, tunnels, caves and urban canyons searching out the enemy.
http://defensetech.org/2010/06/03/me...uvers�/
Defense Tech says that once developed you can arm these bots and use them as precision anti-personnel weapons . You can pick who to wack.

Like I said on my first response ;the problem with developing these are that eventually the enemy will figure out how to makes them also .For every effective offensive weapon developed there is a need for a effective counter-measure .

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Originally Posted by speechlesstx

What, it doesn't look like R2D2? I thought it was clever.

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I wasn't commenting on your answer, yes the cannon looks like R2 but the ray gun doesn't

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Originally Posted by tomder55

. You can pick and choose who to wack.

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Like that is a problem in need of a solution, It's a shame we don't put all this innovation to better use like fixing an oil spill

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Originally Posted by paraclete

Like that is a problem in need of a solution, It's a shame we don't put all this innovation to better use like fixing an oil spill

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With a few of the right calculations this could have but they choose not to use it. Its suppose to be in full use within 5 years.

Whoopy do and anyone who saw the latest transformers movie will know just what it will be used for.

How about that Bot Hayabusa ? It was launched in 2003 with a mission to get close to an asteroid ;shoot a probe into it that would collect raise some dust .Then it was supposed to collect the dust.

Instead as the story goes,it crashed into the asteroid disabling all but it's ion engine propulsion system.

Somehow the engineers played with the joy sticks back on earth and managed to point it in the right direction home.

Today ,it successfully returned ,touching down in Australia . Now the question is ;did it manage to collect some asteroid dust in the close encounter ?

Yeah, I just saw the news. Personally, I doubt that the probe got some asteroid dust because of the failure up there. Now, they hope that some dust might still have been collected inside the probe:

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"But even if it didn't work, the spacecraft landed for half an hour on the surface, and during that landing - it was a hard landing - it should have collected a sample even without firing anything. So, we're pretty confident there'll be something inside the spacecraft," he told BBC News.

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But it that was so, wouldn't the probe lose it while travelling through the atmosphere? :rolleyes: Well, that's just what I think...

The BBC version: BBC News - Hayabusa asteroid-sample capsule recovered in Outback

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But it that was so, wouldn't the probe lose it while travelling through the atmosphere?

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It was designed to collect the dust . Hopefully it came back mission accomplished.

I am very impressed with the bots in space. The Mars Rover Opportunity just set a record for longevity on the martian surface. It is still going strong. The other one Spirit can't move anymore . So they changed it's mission and now acts as a weather station.

Both vastly exceeded their mission expectancy .They were only designed to last 90 martian days.

Tha Japanese now have a bot on it's way to Venus using solar sails .

SPACE.com -- Japanese Spacecraft Deploys Solar Sail

Yes, saw that too on BBC. I never really thought that they'd be actually putting the force that light exerts into use this early.

I remember a documentary watched some years ago about the force that light exerts, but now! A 20m^2 panel, ultra fine to gauge the force by light!

The only thing is that a single mistake can ruin the experiment...

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Originally Posted by BBC

Japanese scientists must now hope they can control this huge spinning film. If instabilities develop in the sail, it could start to bend and fold, ruining the experiment.

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