What do you do when your budget is slashed, but you still need to test out weapons of the future for fighting across deserts and jungles? Build your own desert and jungle. Artificial sandstorms and monsoons? Check.
Inside the Navy's super-teched-out, $17 million Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (that's LASR, to you), foreign battlefields are miniaturized. The lab's Desert High Bay features specially-acquired sand to replicate an Afghani IED disposal—robot arms that will perhaps save lives in war's future participants. The super-flexible, explosive grappling and shoveling arm seen here is controlled PlayStation-style via remote operator, who's able to put the cyborg-grabber through the same rigors of the real desert. The one not inside a 50,000 square foot building in Washington, DC.
