Last week the US army base at Fort Hood, Texas hosted its first Robotics Rodeo. Fifty companies signed up for the mechanical equivalent of a beauty pageant. They handed their contraptions over to the troops to crash them through obstacle courses, all to win the approving eye of the US military.
The aim was to encourage researchers to get their products out of the laboratory and on to the proving grounds. As Lieutenant General Lynch, commander of III Armored Corps and the organiser of the event, said at a recent conference: “If you are not fielding you are failing.”
