Some of you may be wondering when the US going to get something like the Hero robot. Interestingly enough, the military has been testing a similar robot called Odis in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now—but whether we will see one patrolling our borders in the States anytime soon remains to be seen. [BAE via Telegraph via Danger Room]

And here's one of those spiders in more detail:

The intention is that the consortium led by BAE will perform research into developing an "autonomous, multifunctional collection of miniature intelligence-gathering robots" which will operate in places "too inaccessible or dangerous for humans." So, soldiers in the field would be able to deploy the bots and gain a tactical advantage in dangerous situations, or potentially gather evidence they wouldn't have been able to previously. The University of Michigan, the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania are partners too, along with University of California at Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory among others.

Don't expect the robots to be a reality any time soon though, as all these science and engineering teams face an extraordinary number of scientific and technical obstacles to be overcome. Things like small-scale aeromechanics, propulsion, sensors, navigation and ambulation. Only then will the little flapping, crawling insect-things be possible, though part of me hopes the leaping spider thing never gets made— it's just too nasty for words. [BAE Systems via Danger room]

A rail gun, to refresh your memory, is one that relies on precise and extremely juiced electromagnets to thrust the projectile, rather than ever increasing amounts of packed and wadded gunpowder or other fuel. Explosives are, after all, dangerous. On a ship, they either blow up or get wet, and either way that's just bad.

The device BAE Systems shipped to the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. is the 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun (32-MJ LRG for short, but we'll call her "Julie"). It is about four times as strong as the last generation of rail guns, but demands 3 million amps of power per shot—enough to drain your Metal Gear's battery in a heartbeat. You'll notice the word "laboratory" stuck in there. Real-life rail guns have kinks that still need to be worked out:

Effective rail guns will require a major breakthrough in capacitor technology between now and 2020, as well as a way to keep the barrels from being shredded by each high-velocity shot.