Bulletproof Robocops
By Alex Murphy
Serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law. These were the three primary directives of Robocop in the classic 1987 sci-fi blockbuster. It seems, yet again, the silver screen is about to come to life with the claim that robocops are soon to be pounding the streets.The South Korean government is set to spend $34 million over the next five years to fund the creation of police and military robots. But best of all, the government also announced “horse- or dog-shaped bots with six or eight legs will ride with the army”. Eight legs!!! Surely that’s a spider?
Based on this news, there have been increased suggestions that, rather than being the movie capital of the world, Hollywood is in fact just a training ground for new technologies to be paraded on an unassuming public.
It's not just the Koreans who have been watching too many films either, the Australians are also looking to revolutionise law enforcement by developing high-tech bullet proof jackets.
Most bullet proof jackets are currently made of layer upon layer of Kevlar, Twaron or Dyneema fibres which stop bullets from penetrating by spreading the bullet’s force. Someone getting shot, however, can still suffer severe bruising and even organ damage caused by the shear force of the bullet.Carbon nanotechnology may be about to change all this by utilising the elasticity of carbon nanotubes to not only stop bullets penetrating material, but to actually rebound their force. Sounds like there will be bullets pinging off everywhere; just like in the movies.
Working at the scale of a nanometre (one billionth of a metre), physicists are able to form a one-atom thick sheet of graphite, rolled into a cylinder that is held together by a very strong chemical bond called orbital hybridisation – this is a nanotube.
Nanotubes bind together into a strong ‘rope’ thanks to van der Waals forces. These are the weak forces that molecules exert on each other when they are brought close together.
Anyway, I can’t sit here gassing all day, in the words of Robocop himself, “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”
Follow the links for more robot madness:
Weird - Robotic snot is the answer
Stupid - Waterproof builders
Crazy - Emotionally Attached to metal
Cool - The Null gadget shop
Image: Rodolfo Clix
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