“We call it boys’ toys for warfare,” bellows Chris Burgess, as the hip-hop act Stromkern roars “Come Armageddon come” from the plasma screen behind him. On the video a radio-controlled buggy is zipping along a dusty street, its onboard camera swivelling left and right, on the lookout for snipers and roadside bombs that might lie ahead.
Burgess belongs to Mindsheet, one of 11 teams unveiled as finalists in the Ministry of Defence’s most ambitious – and unusual – attempt to bring hi-tech science to the frontline. Called the Grand Challenge, the £4m project calls on engineers to design a robot that can scour an urban area for enemy combatants and explosives and report back, preferably without human intervention …”
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From The Guardian, Friday May 2 2008