Show 55 - First broadcast 19th June 2009

LISTEN TO A PODCAST OF SHOW 54HERE

Noel on the soapbox

I was on my soapbox again this week about armed unmanned air vehicles in the Middle East Conflict zones. I had a feature about them in the Daily Telegraph this week. But what I really want to ask my listeners about was their views on the idea of a Nuclear Dedicated Unmanned bomber. There is an article about it by Adam Lowther in the Armed Forces Journal.

When the virtual turns real on a snowboard

I went to visit Daniela Romano’s virtual reality lab this week and try out a virtual snowboard. I was pretty useless at it but children who go there for training end up much better at snow boarding than those who don’t. There is a video of the work by Peter Styring. Daniela also told me about some new interesting work on using interactive graphical beings as a therapeutical tool for Autism.

Daniela is a lecturer in the Deparment of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield.

Ferreting out drugs with a robot

Tony Dodd from the Department of Automatic Control at the University of Sheffield has just started on a new project to develop a Ferret robot that could be used at UK borders. And he doesn’t even wear a cloth cap. The idea is that it will crawl into cargo containers to look out of drugs, people and other contraband. The project is funded by the EPSRC, UK. I went along to see Tony and find out all about it.

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