Dragon Runner 10 | QinetiQ North America - YouTube

The Dragon Runner 10 (DR-10) Micro Unmanned Ground Vehicle (MUGV) is a lightweight, compact, multi-mission remote platform developed for supporting small unit, dismounted operations.

Using a wearable controller, the warfighter sends DR-10 in first to gain situational awareness and take action. DR-10's day and night sensors enable it to serve as the team's forward eyes and ears while also delivering remote sensors, setting counter-IED charges and more.

QinetiQ North America today announced that its Dragon Runner 10 (DR10) has been selected by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) in response to a Joint Urgent Operations Needs Statement (JUONS) for lightweight, throwable robots.

This order for more than 100 DR10 robots represents the first significant US military procurement of this new class of robot.

With multiple cameras and payload options, DR10 is ideal for reconnaissance and surveillance missions to support small military units, patrols and first responder teams.

At just over ten pounds, DR10 is small enough to carry in an assault pack and rugged enough to throw into buildings and hostile environments.

DR10 can climb stairs, carry significant payloads and maintain effective wireless communication over long distances.

To protect warfighter lives, DR10 is thrown or driven into potentially hostile environments to assess situations remotely, before committing personnel.

DR10 provides rapid situational awareness with visual reports back to its operator using day and night sensors.

With optional accessories, this modular robot can also carry out other critical missions such as delivering counter-IED charges and remote sensors.

The JIEDDO order includes DR10 robots and spare parts at a contract value of $5.3 million. Initial deliveries were made within four weeks of contract award, and follow-on deliveries will continue into early spring 2012.

Multiple payloads are available, including a variety of sensors, radios, cameras and robotic arms. DR10 can be equipped with either tracked or wheeled mobility options to negotiate various types of terrain.

When thrown, DR10 has the ability to automatically flip video images, antennae and controls upon landing. DR10 is 15” long, 13.5” wide and 5.8” tall. For product photos, videos and fact sheets, visit our Facebook page (link below).

QinetiQ North America is a world leader in robotic technology solutions that save lives in defense, security and first responder environments.

For more information, please see our website www.qinetiq-na.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/qinetiqnarobots or Twitter at www.twitter.com/qinetiqnarobots.

One of the Earliest Primitive Maps Found in Spain

"Imagine a group of hunter-gatherers, returning to an area they had not been to for a long time. How do you find a particular cave, especially if the vegetation has changed and its entrance may be masked?" asks independent archaeologist Paul Bahn.

The answer may be that hunter-gatherers had their own maps. A team of archaeologists have matched etchings made 14,000 years ago on a polished chunk of sandstone in northern Spain to the landscape in which it was found. They claim to have the earliest known map of a region in western Europe - a prehistoric hunting map.

The rock, roughly hand-sized and 14,000 years old, bears a mess of overlapping etchings. It was found in a cave in Navarre on the southern side of the Pyrenees and it took Pilar Utrilla of the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and colleagues the better part of 10 years to disentangle the lines and make sense of them (Journal of Human Evolution, DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.05.005).

Above recognisable depictions of reindeer, a stag and some ibex are what Utrilla's team believe is a representation of the landscape surrounding the cave. Several etched lines resemble the shapes of mountains that are visible from the cave.

Long, meandering etches match the course of a river that runs at the foot of one of the mountains and splits into two tributaries. A series of strokes that cut across the river near the mountain could represent places where it was easily crossed, or even bridges, the researchers say.

"This is a pretty spectacular find," says prehistoric archaeologist Lawrence Straus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. "It may give us a glimpse into the ways in which people navigated and explained their territories."

He says the slab was etched during a period of enormous cultural activity in northern Spain. "The human range was expanding northward and population density was increasing after people nearly died off in the last glacial maximum about 20,000 to 17,000 years ago.

People were perhaps having to cooperate, carving up territories among different bands. They had to live by their wits and what the landscape provided." Strauss says engravings and paintings would have helped with territorial definition, hunting, human aggregation and mobility, and generally making sense of the world.

Ötzi the iceman: Leaves a Wealth of Knowledge

Ötzi is a mummified human discovered in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy. He died around 3300 BC.

The mummy offers a wealth of information about the humans living in Europe at the time. Ötzi was named after the Ötztal region where he was found.

The new EURAC Iceman photoscan website now gives all web users access to images of the body gathered by researchers. The site has a dynamic online-map-style interface to let people zoom into photographs that capture Ötzi from all angles and show details as small as 1 millimetre.

(Image: © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology / Eurac / Marco Samadelli / Gregor Staschitz)