5 CHAPTER ONE SAVING LIVES During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s a machine called Scooby Doo showed the value of military robots Scooby Doo worked with US troops in an explosive ordnance disposal EOD team EOD teams work to disable roadside bombs called improvised explosive devices IEDs Those bombs have been a dangerous threat for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan Troops practice climbing rubble with an iRobot Packbot 510 during a robotics class at Fort Irwin California
Hull BUG The US Navy is developing an underwater robot to clean its ships Small marine animals called barnacles grow on ship hulls Too many barnacles cause the ship to move slower in the water and use more fuel The new robot called a Hull BUG is less than three feet 1 m long and weighs only 50 pounds 23 kg It uses an attachment that scrapes a ship’s hull clean On the Hull BUG’s underside a spinning propeller creates suction against the ship’s hull This allows the BUG to stay firmly attached to the ship The navy plans to use the BUG robot to make its ships more efficient as they sail the world’s oceans 6 Robots such as Scooby Doo are some of an EOD unit’s most valuable tools Scooby Doo was a type of Packbot This robot weighs 60 pounds 27 kg It has four cameras and an articulated arm with a gripper It also has flippers that allow it to travel over stairs and other obstacles It can even use its flippers to turn itself over Soldiers use Packbots for spy missions and surveillance They also send the robots to find and dispose of bombs
The Hull BUG uses a biofilm detector to differentiate between clean and unclean surfaces on the hull of a ship Other Packbot robots are even smaller than Scooby They can weigh as little as 40 pounds 18 kg and fit into a soldier’s backpack Packbots have a built-in satellite tracking system They also have a compass and temperature sensors They move on small treads at speeds of more than eight miles per hour 13 km h A Packbot usually goes into a dangerous area before the troops Soldiers operate the robot with a radio control unit The control unit is like a laptop 7
