I once worked in the research and development department of Britain's leading defence company
The team I'd joined had been developing a semi autonomous, all terrain, vehicle which was the same size as a robot from that hit television series, Robot Wars. They were all very pleased with this, however I did not feel it was my place (as I was 18 at the time) to point out that what they had "invented" at great expense, they wanted to sell them to the UK Border Force for £33,000 to checking the underside of trucks as they came into the country, was essentially a remote control car with a camera on it that fed back live images to the operator.
Now I remember you could buy an r/c monster truck with a camera on it that fed back live pictures to the operator (small child) back in about the year 2000 from Toys R Us for £30.
I can't believe they actually built a couple of prototypes of this thing. Pissing money up the wall there I think
(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 5:53, 1 reply)

Some questions: would the toy one
(a) continue to work in pissing down rain?
(b) work reliably for more than a week before you had to take it back to the shop?
(c) stand being trodden on/dropped/thrown in the back of a truck by squaddie?
(d) given that the entire point of its existence is to safely approach explosive devices, could it do that under remote control, while transmitting a video signal, without setting off the device? (not as easy as you might think).
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 9:23, closed)