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"iRobot, the company behind the popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, builds other machines that operate in places a bit more dangerous than your living room: the front lines of combat, radioactive danger zones and hostage situations.\nMore than 4,500 of iRobot's \"Packbot\" and other military-grade robots have been used by military and police around the world to assist in detecting and disarming roadside bombs, testing the structural integrity of the fallen World Trade Center towards after September 11, 2001 and doing reconnaissance in radiation-spoiled areas around Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors.\niRobot's Packbot military hardware has proven so useful to American troops that the U.S. military has awarded the company with a $7.7 million order for upgrading almost 250 high-tech robots. The new robots will include several new features including thermal cameras, a self-righting mechanism that helps a flipped-over robot correct itself and the ability to backtrack to restore a broken communications link.\nThe idea behind these new features is to take as much of the workload off the robot operator as possible, keeping him or her safely at a distance.\n\"How do you take workload off the operator and do recovery functions through autonomous functions,?\" iRobot's Tim Trainer, general manager of the defense and security business unit, asked Mashable. \"That's the primary function, especially in a place with complex terrain like Afghanistan and the potential for rolling a robot over is increased.\"\n\"You might need to expose yourself to right or recover the robot,\" said Trainer, adding that it would put the operator in danger.\n\nSEE ALSO: Beyond the Roomba: How iRobot\u2019s Technology Is Making War Zones Safer for Soldiers\nPackbots can move at 6-7 miles per hour and can lift packages weighing up to 30 pounds. They cost about $100,000 to build, but the price tag can vary depending on features. They're not armored \u2014 in fact, they're likely to \"give their life for the cause\" if anybody were to shoot one, as Trainer put it.\niRobot's other military-grade robots are built in different sizes for different mission profiles: a small robot is useful for stealthy reconnaissance, while a heavy-duty robot can tackle disabling or (safely) detonating larger bombs.\nYou can check out some of the upgraded Packbot's new features in the above video, courtesy of iRobot.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/07/17/military-robot/>