Saturday, September 19, 2009

Forty three militants killed in Khyber operation

A local tribal man seen in a house destroyed during a crackdown operation against militants in Khyber Agency.





Another 43 militants were killed in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency.

According to military sources, 35 militants were killed on Saturday when helicopter gunships shelled bases of the outlawed Lashkar-i-Islam in Sandan area of Tirah valley and Gogrina village in Bazaar-Zakhakhel area. Paramilitary troops and artillery units also took part in the operation.

The helicopters also attacked a training centre of Lashkar-i-Islam in Tirah valley where, according to officials, its chief Mangal Bagh has taken refuge. Six militants were killed in a clash with security personnel in Qambarkhel area.

Militants attacked a military convoy in Sheen Qamar area. Troops returned fire and killed two of the attackers. Security forces demolished 15 houses in different areas of Bara owned by important Lashkar-i-Islam shura members.

Prominent among them are Haji Amal Gul, Haji Jan Gul, Amir Said Nawab, Amir Musa Khan, Maulana Buner, Jan Mast and Shah Faisal.

Hundreds of Bara residents defied curfew and moved to safe places. Some of them said that they had to walk several kilometres to save their lives. ‘We are running out of food and other basic items.’

The Khyber administration announced a relaxation in curfew from 3pm to 6pm on Saturday. Officials said that they were trying to set up relief camps for the displaced people.

‘A total of 43 militants were killed during the operation in Khyber,’ said a Frontier Corps statement.

Troops have been fighting in the area after a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a border police post near Torkham on Aug 28, killing 22 policemen.

‘Today (Saturday) the security forces destroyed the hideouts and a training centre of the Lashkar-i-Islam in Tirah valley. Heavy casualties of militants are expected,’ said an earlier Frontier Corps statement.

On Thursday, troops destroyed the vacated house of Mangal Bagh, who had already escaped to the mountains, officials said.

Mangal Bagh has been accused by officials of running torture centres, private jails and a Taliban-style system in some parts of Khyber.

‘So far, 57 militants have been killed during six days of operations. Five security men have been wounded,’ Tariq Hayat, the top administrator of Khyber, told reporters on Saturday.

The operation would continue until militants were eliminated, he added. Militants frequently attack trucks along the Khyber Pass, a main route for supplies for US troops in Afghanistan.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Beautifull Islamabad Pictures

These are some very beautifull pics of Islamabad

Islamabad Pics

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Future of Idps




AN estimated two-thirds of the 2.7 million people displaced internally by the conflict between the army and the Taliban have returned to their hometowns. However, they are finding the odds still stacked against them. They have lost crops and livestock that constituted primary sources of income, while the conflict has also taken a heavy toll on roads, schools and hospitals. The plight of the returnees is underscored by the UN’s statement that it has so far received a mere three per cent of the $58m it needs to institute ‘early recovery projects’ in the region, such as food aid and the restoration of educational, healthcare and water-supply networks.



The global credit crunch is being blamed for the reluctance of donors to part with the urgently needed funds. No doubt, the worldwide recession has been severe. Nevertheless, donors must understand that the situation is grim: a survey in some militancy-hit areas reveals that 80 per cent believe they will not be able to survive for more than a fortnight without assistance.



Militancy in Pakistan is not an entirely homegrown or isolated issue. It is inextricably linked to international militancy, specifically the situation in Afghanistan. The plight of thousands of affected citizens should make rehabilitation work a priority for the international community. The fact that most IDPs seem to have made the choice to return reflects well on the efforts made by the government to repair the badly damaged civic and administrative infrastructure. Most importantly, the security situation has stabilised, giving many IDPs the confidence to return. Still more needs to be done and it is time the interna- tional community rewarded these citizens’ courage by donating generously to rehabilitation projects and thus lowering the possibility of further strife in the affected areas.

Mobile Robot

New Mobile Robot Balances, Moves On Ball Instead Of Wheels Or Legs
ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2006) — Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels. "Ballbot" is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere. It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people.


Ballbot's creator, Robotics Research Professor Ralph Hollis, says the robot represents a new paradigm in mobile robotics. What began as a concept in his home workshop has been funded for the last two years with grants from the National Science Foundation.

Hollis is working to prove that dynamically stable robots like Ballbot can outperform their static counterparts. Traditional, statically stable mobile robots have three or more wheels for support, but their bases are generally too wide to move easily among people and furniture. They can also tip over if they move too fast or operate on a slope.

"We wanted to create a robot that can maneuver easily and is tall enough to look you in the eye," Hollis said. "Ballbot is tall and skinny, with a much higher center of gravity than traditional wheeled robots. Because it is omnidirectional, it can move easily in any direction without having to turn first."

Ballbot has an onboard computer that reads balance information from its internal sensors, activating rollers that mobilize the ball on which it moves -- a system that is essentially an inverse mouse-ball drive. When Ballbot is not in operation, it stands in place on three retractable legs.

Hollis noted that current legged robots, such as humanoids, are complex and expensive. He's looking for simple alternatives to better understand the issues of dynamic stability for mobile robots in human environments. He believes that the research may produce a robot that could have useful, meaningful interactions with people who are elderly, disabled or need assistance in an office environment.

Hollis and his team -- including Robotics Institute Project Scientist George Kantor and graduate students Tom Lauwers, Anish Mampetta and Eric Schearer -- have demonstrated Ballbot moving on carpeted surfaces. They presented their research findings in October 2005 at the prestigious International Symposium for Robotics Research in San Francisco, and most recently at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, which took place in mid-May in Orlando, Fla. Future plans for Ballbot include adding a head and a pair of arms. Swinging the arms, said Hollis, would help to rotate and balance the body.

"We want to make Ballbot much faster, more dynamic and graceful," he said. "But there are many hurdles to overcome, like responding to unplanned contact with its surroundings, planning motion in cluttered spaces and safety issues."

Hollis has been a pioneer in the field of mobile robots since he began building them as a hobby in the 1950s -- well before there were commodity transistors, personal computers or easily accessible off-the-shelf parts. In the 1960s, he developed one of the world's first mobile robots and followed that in the 1970s with the Newt mobile robot, which was one of the first to have an onboard computer. Hollis wrote an article about Newt for the now-defunct Byte Magazine that was voted one of the publication's best stories of all time. Newt subsequently became a subject in the NOVA television documentary "The Mind Machines."

Hollis' hobby ultimately became his career. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Kansas State University and a doctorate in the field from the University of Colorado. After a short time at North American Aviation, where he worked on computer simulations of space-flight vehicles, he joined the staff at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1978. He initially focused on magnetism and acoustics, but jumped at the opportunity to enter their fledgling robotics research program. He served as manager of advanced robotics in IBM's Manufacturing Research Department from 1986 to 1993, when he accepted a position as a senior research scientist at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

"When I started building robots, the field didn't even exist," said Hollis. "Now the field has grown up around me and I'm in the middle of it. It's like a dream come true."

Robot

Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent.

It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own.

The word robot can refer to both physical and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots to differentiate. Robots can be placed into roughly two categories based on the type of job they do: Jobs which a robot can do better than a human.

Here, robots can increase productivity, accuracy, and endurance. Jobs which a human could do better than a robot, but it is desirable to remove the human for some reason.

Here, robots free us from dirty, dangerous and dull tasks. Manipulation Robots which must work in the real world require some way to manipulate objects; pick up, modify, destroy or otherwise have an effect.

Thus the 'hands' of a robot are often referred to as end effectors, while the arm is referred to as a manipulator.

Most robot arms have replacable effectors, each allowing them to perform some small range of tasks.

Some have a fixed manipulator which cannot be replaced, while a few have one very general purpose manipulator, for example a humanoid hand. Grippers: A common effector is the gripper.

Usually it consists of just two fingers which can open and close to pick up and let go of a range of small objects. Vacuum Grippers: Pick and place robots for electronic components and for large objects like car windscreens, will often use very simple vacuum grippers.

These are very simple, but can hold very large loads, and pick up any object with a smooth surface to suck on to. General purpose effectors: Some advanced robots are beginning to use fully humanoid hands, like the Shadow Hand (right), or the Schunk hand.

These highly dexterous manipulators, with as many as 20 degrees of freedom and hundreds of tactile sensors can be difficult to control.

The computer must consider a great deal of information, and decide on the best way to manipulate an object from many possibilities. Locomotion For simplicity, most mobile robots have wheels.

However, some researchers have tried to create more complex wheeled robots, with only one or two wheels. Two-wheeled balancing: While the Segway is not commonly thought of as a robot, it can be thought of as a component of a robot.

Several real robots do use a similar dynamic balancing algorithm, and NASA's Robonaut has been mounted on a Segway. Ballbot: Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels.

"Ballbot" is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere.

It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person.

Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people.

Walking is a difficult and dynamic problem to solve.

Several robots have been made which can walk reliably on two legs, however none have yet been made which are as robust as a human.

Typically, these robots can walk well on flat floors, can occasionally walk up stairs.

 
Technology-Computer-Robotics | New IT World