Nearly two years ago, the US army set up a taskforce to find ways to protect soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs, which were becoming an increasingly deadly threat to patrols in the country’s notorious Sunni triangle.

The taskforce, headed by Brigadier General Joseph Votel, has come up with a series of much welcomed inventions that have been shipped out to soldiers throughout the theatre. The most recent is an $8,000 (€6,500, £4,430) robot, equipped with a camera and a swivel arm, which is now being beginning to be manufactured by the hundreds after successful field trials.