A new robot will be used to help beat piracy
Designed to crawl over a ship’s hull and send back covert surveillance footage, this is the latest weapon in the fight against piracy.
The new robot, produced by US firm ReconRobotics, can fire from a gun, crawl metallic walls and be deployed via a larger “marsupial” robot. The beercan-sized bot is a modified version of the ReconRobotics ReconScout Throwbot.
Discover Magazine’s Discoblog reports that US forces have already been using the current version of the ReconScout Throwbot, which can be tossed 120 feet, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The remote-controlled bots pack a video camera, and are able to send live footage back to the control unit.
The new bot has magnetized wheels for “climbing up and over” a ship’s hull and ReconRobotics believes it will be helpful for anti-pirate operations where a remot- controlled, robot-mounted video will be able to safely board a ship and send back footage. Low light isn’t a problem either as the Throwbot has infrared illuminators to see in total darkness.Video
