Remote-controlled mine sweeper trial successful
A robot designed to clear minefields without the need for operators on site has been successfully tested, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
The remote-controlled prototype, called Weevil, is expected to replace current mine-clearing methods that require a three-person crew to operate in dangerous areas.
The mine sweeper was successfully tested in Newcastle and the British Army is expected to further develop the technology.
Luke Pollard, minister for the armed forces, said: "It won't be a moment too soon when we no longer have to send our people directly into harm's way to clear minefields."
He added the robot was expected to be able to tackle the fatal threat of mines "in the most challenging environments".
By cutting through minefields, the device clears explosives and pushes them aside, opening a safe path for troops to move faster and more safely towards enemy positions, the MoD said.
The robot was developed by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and Newcastle-based firm Pearson Engineering.
Maj Andrew Maggs, a military adviser with DSTL, said Weevil was the "perfect combination" of tried and tested technology and modern advancements.
He added: "By enhancing existing vehicles with new capabilities, we're able to maximise their potential and give our troops a much-needed advantage, particularly in missions where time and safety are critical."
Follow BBC Newcastle on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Ronin the rat sets new landmine-sniffing record
Deminers: Women excavating the explosive remnants of war
Ministry of Defence
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Truck Parking Club doubles network in under 6 months
Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Truck Parking Club recently announced it has surpassed 2,000 property member locations nationwide, a doubling of its footprint in six months. Part of the growth came from targeting diverse property types, from trucking companies and repair shops to storage facilities and real estate investors. 'This isn't just about hitting a number – it's about solving a decades-old problem that costs the trucking industry billions annually,' said Evan Shelley, co-founder and CEO of Truck Parking Club, in a press release. 'Every new location means drivers spend less time searching and more time earning. Our goal is clear: reduce parking search time to under 10 minutes per day.' The rapid expansion and milestone followed an announcement in February of the addition of industry veteran Brent Hutto as chief relationship officer, the position he formerly held at Truckstop. Part of the push is to build on driver momentum and turn it into enterprise-level relationships. Reed Loustalot, chief marketing officer at Truck Parking Club, said in an earlier interview with FreightWaves, 'Truck Parking Club grew organically and doing that we coincidentally have drivers in 60 of the top 100 fleets booking parking with us, and we have never talked to the fleets directly about having their drivers use our app. It's their drivers, their dispatchers and their fleet managers finding us.' Another advantage of being a truck parking aggregator is it's less expensive and turns otherwise unused parking locations into income production opportunities. Shelley wrote, 'New truck parking construction typically costs $100,000-$200,000 per space and takes years to complete, while Truck Parking Club can activate existing spaces within a day.' Looking ahead to the next milestone, the company is setting its sights on 10,000 locations. The Logistics Managers' Index's recently released May data showed a second consecutive month of expansion. The May LMI came in at 59.4 points, up 0.6 points from 58.8 in April. The m/m increase was impacted by inventories, which saw higher costs and slower movement compared to earlier in the year. The LMI is a diffusion index, with a score above 50 signaling expansion, while below 50 is a contraction. The interplay between warehousing costs and inventory levels was a big theme in May. Warehouse capacity fell 5.4 points in May to 50, while warehousing prices rose 0.2 points to 72.1, a strong expansion. 'This suggests that the inventories that were rushed into the country earlier this year are now static and holding them is expensive,' noted the report. The LMI transportation metrics were mostly stale, with movement less than 1 point. There were some nuances, according to the report. Capacity dipped slightly to 54.7, with upstream firms facing tighter space at 50 points compared to downstream firms' expansion of 65.3 points. Transportation prices rose more for downstream (66.7) than upstream (61.7), but the gap wasn't significant. Transportation utilization fell to 52.6 points, the lowest since November 2023. Despite lower diesel prices ($3.487 a gallon), a predicted import surge could stress intermodal and over-the-road networks, testing supply chain flexibility. On the import front, prognostications for an import boom similarly seen during COVID remain cloudy, due in part to American consumers having less cash than during the stimulus-fueled buying binge. The report adds that it was demand-driven, while the current surge in imports during Q1 was more supply-driven, as shippers tried to pull goods forward to avoid higher costs. 'Even though costs were high, there was a sense that they could grow higher in the future. Today, after several rounds of start-and-stop tariffs, shippers may doubt that the highest levels of threatened tariffs will ever come to pass. At the same time, costs are higher on imports from essentially every country than they were a year ago,' added the report. The post Truck Parking Club doubles network in under 6 months appeared first on FreightWaves.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Route 101 collaborates with NiCE for contract win with U.K.'s DWP
Route 101, a cloud systems integrator, announced in collaboration with NiCE (NICE) a major contract win with the Department for Work and Pensions of the UK government. This contract will see Route 101 and NiCE collaborate to enable the transformation of citizen experiences with the delivery of a UK-sovereign Citizen Experience Platform, powered by NiCE's CXone Mpower and hosted in a secure, UK-based cloud environment. The project will support DWP with the modernisation of its current contact centre operations, supporting over 40,000 agents and transforming both phone and digital services. Confident Investing Starts Here:
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Supreme Court hands DOGE big wins in Social Security, records cases
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) two major victories in its expanding legal battle over drastic efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy. In two separate emergency rulings issued simultaneously, the court lifted a block on DOGE personnel accessing sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) systems and wiped a ruling forcing DOGE to turn over discovery in a records lawsuit. Both rulings appeared to be along the Supreme Court's ideological lines, with the court's three Democratic-appointed justices publicly dissenting. The decisions come as President Trump's relationship with billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, the face of DOGE for months, publicly imploded Thursday. His administration continues to defend DOGE's work in the courts. In the Social Security case, the justices lifted a Maryland-based federal judge's order blocking DOGE from snooping around the SSA's systems that contain personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank data, and earnings history. The majority did not explain the reasoning, only saying that the 'SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency record' under the present circumstances. In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the Trump administration hadn't met the court's high bar for emergency relief, accusing her colleagues of 'jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking.' 'The Court is thereby, unfortunately, suggesting that what would be an extraordinary request for everyone else is nothing more than an ordinary day on the docket for this Administration,' Jackson wrote. 'I would proceed without fear or favor to require DOGE and the Government to do what all other litigants must do to secure a stay from this Court,' she continued. Justice Elena Kagan also dissented, but she did not join the duo's opinion. The challenge to DOGE's ability to poke around in the SSA's systems came from a coalition of government unions, backed by the left-leaning legal group Democracy Forward, that claimed DOGE's unfettered access to the sensitive data ran afoul of privacy laws and the SSA's own rules and regulations. U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander's order allowed the SSA to provide DOGE with access to redacted or anonymized data and records, but it required DOGE agents to receive the necessary training for those systems. She wrote that DOGE's efforts to slim down the federal bureaucracy weren't the problem at hand, but rather 'how they want to do the work.' Hollander is an appointee of former President Obama. Solicitor General D. John Sauer had argued that her preliminary injunction undermined DOGE's mission to streamline and modernize the government while rooting out waste and fraud. He criticized the nationwide relief as a 'now-familiar theme,' alluding to several Justice Department emergency appeals challenging universal injunctions — a practice the justices heard arguments about last month in the administration's appeal of an order blocking Trump's bid to narrow birthright citizenship. 'The government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs,' Sauer wrote in the government's emergency application. The Supreme Court's second emergency decision stems from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against DOGE. The government had asked the justices to overturn a judge's order allowing limited discovery into whether DOGE is an 'agency,' which would dictate whether it's subject to FOIA requests. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an appointee of Obama, directed the release of all 'recommendations' DOGE made to various federal agencies, in addition to other internal documents. He also ordered a deposition of acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason. By agreeing to wipe that order, the Supreme Court's decision marks a major victory for the Trump administration's efforts to keep DOGE's inner workings behind the veil. The majority said Cooper's order was 'not appropriately tailored' to whether DOGE was an agency. 'Furthermore, separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal Executive Branch communications,' the court wrote in its unsigned ruling. The three Democratic-appointed justices again publicly dissented, but they didn't offer an explanation. Sauer argued that DOGE is a 'presidential advisory body' housed within the Executive Office of the President — not an agency. He said that Cooper's order would 'significantly distract' from DOGE's mission to identify and eliminate 'fraud, waste and abuse' within the federal government, calling the discovery ordered 'extraordinarily overbroad and intrusive.' 'That order turns FOIA on its head,' Sauer claimed, 'effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies.' The legal challenge was mounted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which argued that the public has a right to know about DOGE's 'secretive operations.' It is one of many designed to test whether DOGE must respond to FOIA requests. Several legal battles linked to DOGE have reached the Supreme Court, but these two cases are the first where DOGE is a respondent. Updated at 5:19 p.m. EDT Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
