Let’s move onto something a little more serious for a moment. There’s a device that the New York Times highlighted yesterday called the ADE 651. It’s a small, hand-held explosives detector, or so claims the company behind it, the UK-based ATSC. It’s being heavily used in Iraq, and officials there swear by it. Meanwhile, American officials call the device about as effective and realistic as a Ouija board. It’s rubbish.

Iraqis use the device at the many checkpoints set up around the country. Reason being that it’s less of a hassle to use the device than it is to use, say, a specially trained dog. The device is being questioned in the wake of several bomb attacks in Baghdad: if the device were so effective, then why didn’t it detect those bombs?

An American military commander said, bluntly, “I have no confidence that these would work.” Can’t get any more clear than that.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry bought 800 devices in 2008 for a cool $32 million. So, depending on your point of view, that’s $32 million wisely invested, or $32 million completely burned in an incinerator.

Says the report:

ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

Sounds like something out of a comic book to me.

By Chris Scott Barr

There are some debates that all geeks seem to have with their friends. Star Wars vs Star Trek, Pirates vs Ninjas, Windows vs Mac, etc. One that tends to come up in my circle is which will try to take over the world first, zombies or robots. Well here’s a little bit of info that’ll give you an edge when voting on the side of robots.

Apparently a group of people have developed a sniper robot that refuels using biomass. Yes Virginia, the damn thing gets its juice from consuming human bodies. I’m sure that it’s programmed to only go after dead bodies, but a quick bullet to your backside would be enough to prevent its imminent shutdown. The AI is programmed to plan out its actions for the immediate future through the next 24 hours. With a name like EATR, what could possibly go wrong?

[ RTI ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Yes, it can use plants and compost and stuff like that, but let’s be honest. You’re deploying these on a battlefield. These sons of bitches are going to be eating bodies all day long. And you think it’ll stop there?

In the presentation on the EATR (I know) robot’s construction and AI, it is shown that the robot creates plans for the next 50ms to the next 24 hours. Sure, if it’s in a foxhole with you, its one-hour plan is to sit tight and wait for backup. But if shutdown is imminent, it may start implementing Code Dahmer in its long-term strategy.

Seriously, it’s not enough to create simple sniper-bots, you have to make some that actively crave flesh?

[via HardOCP and Fox News]