While the TSA has bumped up security quite a bit in the last few weeks, nothing compares with Boston Logan International Airport’s new innovation: a security robot.
It doesn’t look like a traditional robot, it looks more like a small truck, but it will help to detect and disarm explosives, according to WHDH.com.
Unveiled yesterday by Massport and the State Police, the robot was invented and assembled by Black-I Robotics, whose co-founder is Brian Hart. Hart’s 20-year old son was killed in an ambush in Iraq, which led his father to devote his time improving security technology to save human lives. The robot is dedicated to Hart’s son, and also to Derek Hines, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. The project was funded by congressional appropriations from 2008-2010.
Basically, officials are able to send the robot into dangerous situations to spy – finding information on where something is, or how something is being prepared. It can detect a hazardous bag among many others, and use its powerful arm strength to physically lift it out of a pile and bring it to a contained area.
The robot runs at approximately 10 miles an hour, which is about the speed of a marathon runner.
