LANdroid - Network On The Go
When you say “network on the go”…
it happens sometimes you really mean it.
From MIT Technology Review “Local Area Network Droids“:
The robots, called LANdroids, are being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of a $3 million three-year research program. The aim is to create expendable robots that will be able to overcome the communications problems that soldiers currently face in built-up areas. […]
Existing radio communications networks used by the military work well when there is line of sight, but urban environments can hinder this. Obstacles and structures can reflect, refract, diffract, or absorb the radio signals, leading to signal loss and attenuation. The overall effect is that soldiers often have to work with poor and unreliable radio communications.
The LANdroids will be designed to overcome this problem using an autonomous positioning system that will help the robots adapt the communications networks as needed. To do so, the bots will use the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard to form mobile ad hoc networks that can repair and reroute themselves if, for example, the enemy destroys a robot.
Awesome ! Totally impressive. Italy is one of the best country in Robotic research, get a look to Google Moon Race (http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/) Italian’s project is one of the most impressive.
Comment by Marco Ramilli — March 11, 2008 @ 11:13 am