The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used by the US Air Force as a surveillance aircraft. In role and design, it is somewhat similar to the Lockheed U-2, the venerable 1950s spy plane. It is a theater commander's asset to both provide a broad overview and systematically target surveillance shortfalls. The Global Hawk air vehicle is able to provide high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)—that can penetrate cloud-cover and sandstorms—and Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) imagery at long range with long loiter times over target areas. It can survey as much as 100,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of terrain a day.
The Global Hawk is the first UAV to be certified by the FAA to file its own flight plans and use civilian air corridors in the United States with no advance notice. This potentially paves the way for a revolution in unmanned flight, including that of automatically piloted passenger airliners.
ASIMO is a humanoid robot created by Honda Motor Company. Standing at 130 centimeters (4 feet 3 inches) and weighing 54 kilograms (119 lbs.), the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack and can walk on two feet in a manner resembling human locomotion at up to 6 km/h (3.7 mph). ASIMO was created at Honda's Research & Development Wako Fundamental Technical Research Center in Japan. It is the current model in a line of eleven that began in 1986 with E0. Officially, the name is an acronym for "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility". Honda's official statements indicate that the robot's name is not an homage to science fiction writer and inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics, Isaac Asimov. As of 2002, there were 20 ASIMO units in existence. Each one costs less than $1 million to manufacture, and some units are available to be hired out for $150,000 per month.
Sandstorm is an autonomous vehicle. Created by Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team, it is a heavily modified 1986 model 998 HMMWV. It competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005. Sandstorm qualified in first position in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. It travelled the fastest and farthest (7.4 miles) during the race before high centering on an embankment. Sandstorm competed in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge on October 8th, qualifying third from the pole position behind Stanley and finished in 7 hours, 5 minutes, placing 2nd out of the five vehicles to complete the 132 mile course.
The sensors used by Sandstorm in 2004 included three fixed LIDAR laser-ranging units, one steerable LIDAR, a RADAR unit, and a pair of cameras for binocular vision. Sandstorm also has a GPS and an inertial navigation system for determining geographical position.
Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner made and sold by iRobot. It is marketed as a Robotic Floorvac. The Roomba was first released in 2002 with updates and new models released in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. As of May 2006, over 2 million units have been sold, making it the most successful domestic robot so far. The unit is a disc, thirteen inches (34 cm) in diameter and less than four inches (9 cm) high. A large contact-sensing bumper is mounted on the front half of the unit, with an infrared sensor at its top front center.
The Roomba operates with internal nickel metal hydride batteries and requires being recharged regularly from a wall plug, although newer third-generation models have a self-charging homebase they automatically try to find. Charging on the homebase takes about three hours. All third-generation Roombas can be used with the homebase, even if they do not come packaged with it. First and second-generation models came packaged with a twelve-hour charger, although a three-hour rapid charger could also be used with them.
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