Little Robot With Big Guns Could Replace Human Soldiers.
25-year-old Adam Gettings, a self-taught engineer, has recently created Robotex AH - a two-foot tall, 10-mph-traveling machine that can blow a 10-inch hole through a steel door from a quarter mile away. It's also remote-controlled over an encrypted frequency that jams nearby radios and cell phones
It took Gettings just six months to create Robotex, with assistance from shotgun maker Jerry Baber and ex-Disney imagineer Terry Izumi.
Izumi created this video of Robotex for Fortune Magazine. The robot can do some impressive tricks, including climbing stairs with its four wheels, rolling through a foot of water, and smoothly gliding over rocky terrain - while simultaneously firing its machine guns at specific targets, at 300 rounds per minute.
At a cost as low as $30,000 per robot, and with funding not from the government but from angel investors, the project is truly independent. Izumi, Gettings and Baber's unique skills and mentality for quick results lead to Robotex and a new company of the same name.
Now the inventors are facing perhaps a bigger challenge: trying to sell the robot to the government. Baber plans to get several robots on display in military company Blackwater's lobby, and hope they cause a stir and the public stands up for the technology.
"If moms and dads around the country find out this system is available while their sons are off sopping up bullets in Iraq, they're going to tear the White House down," he says. "This will take the soldiers out of harm's way
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