A Robot to Rescue Soldiers from the Battlefield

What if you were wounded on a battlefield and you would see a robot coming out of the fog towards you with a sole purpose � to get you out of that hell you got into?

The robot is real, but I hope you will never have to meet it because then you wouldn't be able to move and the robot would carry you to the nearest base camp. This is BEAR's (Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot) mission - to rescue injured soldiers that can't get help by themselves.

BEAR can easily carry any soldier, or other load that weighs up to 500 pounds for about 50 minutes. The developer, Vecna Robotics, has designed the prototype for the U.S. Army, but BEAR will have to wait a little bit until it will get into action.

If you are wondering how the robot works, I can tell you that the mechanism is pretty complicated, meaning that 'the body', depending on the integrated technology, is divided in three parts. The first, the upper body, is controlled by using hydraulics, a mobile platform, to be more specific, that has two autonomous sets of 'legs' and a dynamic balancing behavior (DBB), the ability of the robot to balance itself, disregarding the position (if it's standing on its 'knees', 'hips' or 'ankles').

Because the Army delayed the BEAR project, Vecna thought of using its robots in other, not so demanding environments, such as hospitals. The robots will carry the people with conditions like spinal cord injuries and eliminate the human mistake (dropping) or the time loss.

"The HomeBEAR robot could perform the same task for the mobility impaired who live at home. The HomeBear could be a domestic assistant to help with Activities of Daily Living (help walking, getting in and out of bed, chairs, bathtub, shower, cars; help getting dressed, and other activities) for the disabled and the frail elderly, helping to keep these large demographic populations living independently with affordable costs," writes Primidi.