Putting Robots Through Their Paces

Before you purchase and deploy robots to places like Iraq to search for bombs or victims of attacks, it's a good idea to test them to figure out if they actually work. And before you do that, it's a good idea to make sure you have a test that actually separates the effective robots from the ones that aren't so good. That's where the Science and Technology Directorate at the Homeland Security Department and the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology come in, the New York Times reports today. Their tests of the tests take place at Disaster City, a 52-acre area of wreckage and rubble in College Station, Texas, operated by Texas A&M University's Texas Engineering Extension Service.

Here's some background on the Disaster City tests, courtesy of my colleague Allan Holmes at Tech Insider.