During World War II, the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant in case the Japanese decided to attack the West Coast. So, of course, they built a fake subdivision on its roof. More »
The Pentagon is giving the war profiteers over at Lockheed Martin a nice chunk of change to develop a spy camera modeled after a maple seed. Loaded up with two rockets, the wee, single-winged camera would be used in large clusters over war zones, capturing loads of imagery to give a complete picture of a situation. In addition to the camera and rockets on board, the devices will be stocked with telemetry, communications, navigation and a power source. They look pretty neat to me, but it’d be nice if we didn’t have as much of a use for them by the time they’re developed. [Scientific American via The Raw Feed] More »
newVideoPlayer("lomomule_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Here’s a video of Lockheed Martin’s MULE advanced robotic vehicle in action, complete with Joes and baddies shooting at each other while the MULE fires its machine gun, gives away free rockets to an enemy tank and pinpoints targets for ballistic missiles. It gives you a good idea of what this amazing machine would do in real-life missions. And you gotta love the A-Team-style effects and music. Full explanation by Mr. T right after the jump. More »
Lockheed Martin, everybody’s favorite war profiteer, is hard at work on its new MULE robotic vehicle, a little guy that’s able to traverse all sorts of terrain without help from human handlers. While still a ways off from hitting the sunny shores of Iraq, as it’s not due ’til around 2013, its Engineering Evaluation Unit (EEU) is doing all sorts of impressive things on the training course. Just recently, it autonomously climbed a 30-inch step and bridged a 70-inch gap without any help from people, which is more than I could probably do. It should be interesting to see how this progresses over the next few years. [Lockheed Martin] galleryPost('mule', 4, 'MULE Robotic Vehicle'); More »
