|
By Ike Suarez, Correspondent
A Philippine Navy reserve officer and former
dean of the Mapua Institute of Technology’s School of Mechanical
Engineering has led an R & D team in that school in developing
an affordable robot to defuse and remove bombs planted by
terrorists; its first commercially produced model is set for
delivery soon to the Philippine National Police’s (PNP’s) Makati
City unit.
In an exclusive interview, Roel John Judilla
told Tech Times that among the robot’s talking points is that it
is sufficiently high tech for Philippine security needs. At the same
time, it has been fabricated from materials readily available
“off-the-shelf” in the country.
He pointed out that as an example, the robot’s
electronic components had been purchased mostly from shops in
Manila’s Raon street, regarded since the 1950s as a shopper’s
paradise for Filipino electronics enthusiasts.
Judilla, a lieutenant in the Philippine Navy
active reserve, said inspiration for the robot’s development came
from his having regularly watched television news scenes of PNP bomb
disposal experts manually handling packages suspected to contain
bombs planted by terrorists. As a concerned citizen, he decided to
apply his engineering knowledge and skills to help the police and
military neutralize explosives without endangering their and other
people’s lives.
The 34-year-old Judilla, director of Mapua’s
alumni liaison office, has already led R & D teams that
developed two remote controlled devices to enable the Philippine
Navy to upgrade part of its existing weaponry within its limited
budget. These are the Trident Strike and the Spearhead.
The first is a remote control firing platform
for up to four caliber 50 machine guns mounted on Philippine Navy
vessels. The second is a remote controlled and mobile firing
platform for M60 machine guns, primarily for service in the
Philippine Marine Corps.
Judilla said the bomb disposal robot the Makati
City government had purchased for the PNP cost P200,000. Should it
be manufactured in the future in larger production lots, its price
per unit would be lower.
In contrast, ultra-sophisticated bomb disposal
robots the US military has deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have per
unit costs ranging from $10,000 to $150,000.
Judilla said the robot has been designed to
handle both military grade and improvised explosive devices weighing
up to five kilograms. It can also do mobile reconnoitering of the
area it has been tasked to secure.
The robot’s main parts consist of a gripper,
gripper camera, pivot boom, infrared camera, rubber tires, and
electronics control board. The electronic system had been
developed by Mapua electronics and communications engineering
majors.
Software for the control board had also been
written by these undergraduate students. The language used was
Visual C ++, an Open Source developer platform downloadable from the
Internet.
Its dimensions are 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet.
When delivered to buyers, it shall be encased for aesthetic purposes
and will resemble in appearance a miniature main battle tank.
Its operator shall manipulate the robot
from a remote console and view images from a 10-inch LCD screen. A
150-feet long cable shall link the robot to the control box.
Judilla said upgrades could enable the robot to
be controlled via wireless. Its sensors could also be upgraded to
deliver images with higher resolutions. But these would also require
increases in per unit costs.
The patent filed with the Philippine Patent
Office is in Judilla’s name. But because the robot had been
developed and produced in Mapua’s laboratories and with the help
of its students, royalty sharing agreements have been entered into
with the school and other R & D team members.
A prototype of the robot had been developed
mid-2007. September that same year, it exhibited at the Industrial
Invention Contest in Taipei, Taiwan.
Judilla said motivation for developing national
security-related devices comes from his sense of gratitude to the
Philippine government. This is because in the late 1990s, the
Department of Science and Technology granted him a scholarship
enabling him to acquire a master’s degree in engineering at Mapua.
He hope to acquire a doctorate from abroad in the near future.
He agreed with Tech Times’ observation that
the devices he developed could be exported to countries
friendly with the Philippines and whose defense and law enforcement
budgets are also limited. He added he was open to the possibility of
these devices being manufactured abroad under licensing agreements.
|
