An Autonomous 'Bot that Burrows Underground to Deliver Deadly Payloads

Ha! I love that show!

Ok, I admit Thunderbirds is an awesome show and this is cool.

It also reminds me of the glorious days of G.I. Joe and their wonderful government vehicles.

Also see: Centurians.

--GTO--

DARPA = Skynet. Great job putting a bad and unexplained photo of an obscure kids' TV show to headline the article, Mr. Dillow. It makes you look like you do a crappy job of searching the image bank.

@ The Famous
youre so angry

BOMBS... UNDERGROUND... ALL OUR BUNKERS ARE UNDERGROUND... I BELIEVE ITS TIME TO CREATE THE FIRST AERIAL BUNKER.

@ The famous
i agree with you
at first i thought that was an actual picture

could even be plucked from "The Matrix"
42.

I swear DARPA watches the Thunderbirds to get ideas. Or at lease, every single person who works there watched this show, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and on and on. Ignore the spuds, Clay, perfect picture choice. Thank you so much for reminding me of that vehicle. Can you imagine what a total hoot it was to shoot that show. Every boy's dream.

Wouldn't it be easier to drop a large rod of burning magnesium where you want a tunnel? More like a one way hole than a tunnel.

@ nonsquid

That of course would make too much sense. We need machines that do not work right to do the job wrong.

No what they should have used is a tunneling machine from "Total Recall."

Benny: Hey, Quaid! I'm gonna squash you!
Douglas Quaid: Benny! Here!
Benny: [shouts] Where the **** are you?
Douglas Quaid: [killing him with a large drill] Screw you, Benny!

--GTO--

All you have to do to stop this thing is have Morpheus fire the EMP and keep it from reaching Zion.

I see they've been studying.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency should come up with a better accronym than "DTRA". I'd change my name to something better like DEfense THreat Reduction AgencY or DETHRAY for short :)

so the whole 'DARPA gets paid to hit the bong' story wasn't a joke..
they better plan on running it on nuclear because how else do they plan on drilling long distances or refueling

Yeah, there's no way the guys in the bunker will hear this coming and bug out.

Stupid idea. Just think about how much power would be needed to tunnel underground. Thats the problem with all these autonomous technologies.

Firstly, a problem would be the power supply. How long until the battery runs down? (Maybe a train of recharging vehicles could follow it, containing an additional charge to go a little further. If it's not too, too far, maybe even a small cable could trail it. But it has to be air delivered. Hmmm.)

Then navigation would require radio contact with a GPS source, meaning it couldn't go very deep, unless another one followed it, burrowing at a shallow depth, and relaying the signal (Thus betraying their presence.) Maybe a sonar signal could signal left, right, etc, with infrequent beeps.

Possibly UPS or Fed Ex would be cheaper. Or maybe pay the other guys to plant it from their end.

It'd be nice to have a small version of this device to borrow and deposit tubing for geothermal heating and cooling.

--Belief is involuntary, forget about dogma.

As was stated previously, the first hurdle to overcome is power. We don't have any kind of battery with that kind of power density. Digging through sand might be achievable. But, earth and clay and especially stone would be impossible.

There is also a problem with varying densities of material that would be encountered. A screw might go through sand and loose soil. But, it takes something different to go through clay and rock. I suggest that the device will likely be somewhat pointed and driven into the ground with an explosive device because it would have to be able to shatter stone. A bunker buster uses the energy potential of height plus a rocket engine to develop enough kinetic energy to penetrate the earth. A ground launched device would need a much more powerful engine.

My guess is that this is another "Star Wars" project which is intended to funnel a bunch of money to large defense industries. A working system will never happen. But, a couple of generals and maybe a Congressional representative or two will come into some mighty fine windfalls.

Am I the only one thinking about the movie screamers here?

You're not the only one, that was the first thing I thought of as soon as I saw the headline.

RUM, huh? Sounds more like an RUS (Rodent of Unusual Size) to me.

Problem for the USA: wouldn't the ground around a biochemical/nuclear site hare an über amount of lead in it, therefore preventing any remote signals from reaching the vehicle?

P.S. a 13 year old just outsmarted DTRA and DARPA.

@duheagle: you watch WWWAAAYYY too much princess bride!!!!!

It looks like a realy incredible piece of tecnology. I believe that a similar 'Bot was discussed on one of the http://techmashup.net/ sorry forgotten the exact one.

You're not the only one, that was the first thing I thought of as soon as I saw the headline.

Evail
http://burnwiigames.org/

Stupid idea. Just think about how much power would be needed to tunnel underground. Thats the problem with all these autonomous technologies.
www.tran33m.com/vb/