US Airforce enlists robots to pack soldiers' bags

Robopallet to the rescue...

US Airforce enlists robots to pack soldiers' bags. Robots, 0

2 June 2011 15:21 GMT / By Hunter Skipworth

Those lazy army guys eh? Always nagging the airforce to lug their gear about town.To be fair they do have planes so I imagine things are a bit easier than carrying things on your back.

Still getting all those rucksacks and guns and bombs into the back of a plane can't be particularly easy. Enter Robopallet, the military's answer to manual labour. What had once been a back-breaking job requiring tons of cargo to be lifted and moved by the air force is now to be replaced by robots. Contracts have been awarded to a pair of companies to come up with pallets that will load cargo onto C-130 aircraft.

The first design by Hstar Technologies, is i-Pbot which can communicate wirelessly with other hydraulic pallets to ensure a sort of robotic ballet occurs whilst aircraft are loaded.

Next up is Stratom's Roboloader which can carry a whopping five tons, communicate with its robotic pallet pals wirelessly and even with a command centre. Skynet anyone?

It is going to be a while before we get to enjoy the excitement of Avatar style suits that help us to carry caravans about. But for now we can at least enjoy pretending to be Iron Man in the Raytheon XOS 2.

Exoskeleton? Or let the 'bots do it for you...let us know!

Via: wired.com Via: flickr.com

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