Schlagwort: military

  • UK soldiers design Raspberry Pi bomb disposal robot

    UK soldiers design Raspberry Pi bomb disposal robot

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Three soldiers in the British Army have used a Raspberry Pi to build an autonomous robot, as part of their Foreman of Signals course.

    Meet The Soldiers Revolutionising Bomb Disposal

    Three soldiers from Blandford Camp have successfully designed and built an autonomous robot as part of their Foreman of Signals Course at the Dorset Garrison.

    Autonomous robots

    Forces Radio BFBS carried a story last week about Staff Sergeant Jolley, Sergeant Rana, and Sergeant Paddon, also known as the “Project ROVER” team. As part of their Foreman of Signals training, their task was to design an autonomous robot that can move between two specified points, take a temperature reading, and transmit the information to a remote computer. The team comments that, while semi-autonomous robots have been used as far back as 9/11 for tasks like finding people trapped under rubble, nothing like their robot and on a similar scale currently exists within the British Army.

    The ROVER buggy

    Their build is named ROVER, which stands for Remote Obstacle aVoiding Environment Robot. It’s a buggy that moves on caterpillar tracks, and it’s tethered; we wonder whether that might be because it doesn’t currently have an on-board power supply. A demo shows the robot moving forward, then changing its path when it encounters an obstacle. The team is using RealVNC‘s remote access software to allow ROVER to send data back to another computer.

    Applications for ROVER

    Dave Ball, Senior Lecturer in charge of the Foreman of Signals course, comments that the project is “a fantastic opportunity for [the team] to, even only halfway through the course, showcase some of the stuff they’ve learnt and produce something that’s really quite exciting.” The Project ROVER team explains that the possibilities for autonomous robots like this one are extensive: they include mine clearance, bomb disposal, and search-and-rescue campaigns. They point out that existing semi-autonomous hardware is not as easy to program as their build. In contrast, they say, “with the invention of the Raspberry Pi, this has allowed three very inexperienced individuals to program a robot very capable of doing these things.”

    We make Raspberry Pi computers because we want building things with technology to be as accessible as possible. So it’s great to see a project like this, made by people who aren’t techy and don’t have a lot of computing experience, but who want to solve a problem and see that the Pi is an affordable and powerful tool that can help.

    Website: LINK

  • US Marines Receive Intensive Training to Use LulzBot 3D Printers

    US Marines Receive Intensive Training to Use LulzBot 3D Printers

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Training company Building Momentum are using LulzBot 3D printers to train the US Marines in creative problem solving and innovation.

    Building Momentum is a company based in Alexandria, Virginia which provides consulting on science, engineering, and technology development to defense, education, corporate, and entrepreneurial organizations.

    Since 2015, Building Momentum has been helping innovators around the world, providing intensive instruction in such fields as mobile lab design, 3D printing in combat, and CAD software.

    “We’re the people who go to strange places and do MacGyver-like things, and we do a lot of training for that with the US Marine Corps,” said CEO and Founder Brad Halsey.

    Having mastered 3D printing during his own deployment in Iraq, solving problems in high pressure conditions, Halsey was inspired to share his expertise and enthusiasm.

    About his client base, Halsey says, “Anyone from teachers to Seal Team guys, you name it. The client who has gotten most of our training is the U.S. Marine Corps, and all of our training is extremely immersive.”

    Building Momentum’s training includes team-oriented challenges requiring a combination of emerging technology and creativity in order to achieve a technical objective within a designated time constraint. They present multi-faceted creative challenges under pressure, every day for a week or more.

    When asked about specific applications US Marines may use 3D printers for, Halsey was quick to dismiss the notion of weapons: “A lot of the things we focus on are some other types of solutions and development technologies, things that can help in other ways that aren’t just some weapon accoutrement.”

    Buckles, handles, camera mounts, and other things that have a tendency to break can be designed and printed in a matter of hours, instead of waiting days or even months for a replacement.

    US Marines Learn Problem Solving Through Technology

    Halsey recently returned to the United States from Kuwait, where his team supplied Marines with LulzBot TAZ 6 3D Printers and provided training on deconstruction and reassembly.

    “The TAZ 6s that we have in Kuwait, we teach them how to tear them down and build them back up,” Halsey said. “Having the ability to remake the parts is actually pretty useful, and that’s one of the reasons we like the TAZ over other printers.”

    The fact that LulzBot 3D Printers are certified Open Source Hardware is a important to Halsey, who believes in the advantages of Free and Open Source technology.

    “I have a very strong and adamant philosophy that whatever I teach a Marine, they have to be able to do at home, after hours, overseas, anywhere they can,” Halsey said “So we train everyone explicitly, as much as humanly possible, to use Open Source stuff.”

    For Halsey and his team, training is only the beginning. Building Momentum will soon be opening their own community-driven, co-working makerspace in Washington D.C. where small businesses, artists, and educators can gain full-time access to machines and training courses for rapid prototyping as well as artistic innovation.

    “If you use a TAZ 6 to make a product and it’s going well, you’re going to buy more TAZ 6s as you expand your business,” Halsey says.

    us marines
    us marines

    Source: LulzBot

    License: The text of „US Marines Receive Intensive Training to Use LulzBot 3D Printers“ by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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  • US Army is Recycling Plastic Bottles for 3D Printing

    US Army is Recycling Plastic Bottles for 3D Printing

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    The US Army is exploring ways to convert discarded plastic bottles into recycled PET filament. Soldiers will become even more self-sufficient in the battlefield by 3D printing useful spare parts from waste material.

    A collaboration between the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Marine Corps has resulted in the discovery of using waste plastics — such as water bottles, milk jugs and yogurt containers — for 3D printing parts that soldiers may need on the battlefield.

    Recycled plastics could be a valuable source of material for additive manufacturing in the US Army. Not only would it improve the self-reliance of service members on forward operating bases, it would also cut costs and reduce demand for the resupply of parts.

    “The potential applications for additive manufacturing technologies are extensive,” says ARL researcher Dr. Nicole Zander. “Everything from pre-production models and temporary parts to end-use aircraft parts and medical implants.”

    Additive manufacturing offers many advantages over traditional manufacturing, including increased part complexity and reduced time and cost to produce one-off items, such as a bracket for a radio.

    The research by Zander and Captain Anthony Molnar from the U.S. Marine Corps generated filament from 100 percent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from bottles and plastics without any chemical modifications or additives. This filament can then be used in fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers.

    Work is also underway to generate filament from other recycled plastics and reinforced filaments. Zander says that while PET is widely used in many applications, it is not widely used as a “feedstock” for FDM because of difficulties like high melting temperature, moisture absorption, and issues with crystallization.

    US Army Developing Mobile Recycling Facility for Battlefield 3D Printing

    Molnar, project officer with the mobility and counter mobility team in Quantico, Virginia, argues that PET plastics such as water bottles and packaging are one of the most prolific wastes found on the battlefield.

    Both US and coalition forces produce large volumes of this waste, and being able to repurpose this on location will reduce the logistic burden of transporting parts to forward operating bases. Not to mention the additional costs of disposing of the recyclable material.

    To this end, Zander and Molnar are in the process of building a mobile recycling facility so that soldiers will be able to repurpose plastics into feedstocks for 3D printing.

    “The MRF will be a plastic processing laboratory housed in a 20-foot ISO container, with all equipment and tools needed to fabricate 3D printing filament from plastic waste,” Zander says.

    The researchers have determined that recycled plastics have shown to be suitable material for 3D printing, provided the material is properly cleaned and dried. The tensile strength of printed parts from recycled PET was equivalent to printed parts made from commercial off the shelf PET pellets and commercial filaments. But the work will not stop here.

    Zander said blending with other plastics, or the addition of fillers such as reinforcing or toughening agents, may further improve the mechanical properties of the recycled plastic filament and expand the realm of applications in how it may be used.

    “Ultimately, we’d like to produce the best possible feedstock we can from recycled plastics and waste materials,” Zander explains.

    “Future work will involve testing select 3D printed long-lead parts against original parts to determine if they can be a suitable long-term or at least a temporary replacement.”

    US Army 3d printing
    US Army 3d printing

    Source: Press Release

    License: The text of „US Army is Recycling Plastic Bottles for 3D Printing“ by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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  • The US Military is Building a Real-Life Hoverbike!

    The US Military is Building a Real-Life Hoverbike!

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

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    military-hoverbike

    Our second generation Hoverbike in a unmanned static hover.

    This vehicle is very capable of lifting a person of at least 100kg, however for safety and legal reasons we are testing this vehicle as a drone for the time being, as it makes do difference to the aircraft if it’s lifting a human or dummy payload.