PackBot Goes Kite-Surfing

This isn’t the dumbest idea in the history of military robotics. But it sure as sugar ain’t the smartest, either. A few years back, the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command and the Armaments Research, Development, and Engineering Center funded a team from iRobot — makers of the PackBot line of military unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs — to see if they could make their square, squat machine fly. CNET reports what happened next: They came up with the Griffon (PDF), an iRobot
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