A robot designed for urban warfare will soon be on its way to assist U.S. Marines in Iraq, where the scrappy machine can peer around corners and snoop in areas too dangerous or inaccessible for human soldiers.

Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory A researcher throws a Dragon Runner prototype over a wall during testing at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The device was designed to reach its destination either under its own power or by being thrown or dropped. Click photo for larger image.

Called Dragon Runner, the four-wheeled device is small and light enough to be carried in a soldier's backpack and rugged enough to be tossed over fences and up or down stairwells.

"We've thrown it out of second- and third-story windows," said Capt. Dave Moreau, project officer for Dragon Runner at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va. "We've thrown it off the back of a moving vehicle at 45 miles an hour."

The flat, squarish robot can operate whichever way it lands. "There's no right side up," Moreau said. The robot is steered by a soldier, who can see where it is going via its onboard video camera. It has infrared capabilities for operating at night.

Dragon Runner was developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and the National Robotics Engineering Consortium under contract to the Marines. Twelve prototypes have been built by the CMU spinoff Automatika Inc. and are being delivered to the Marines.

The Corps isn't talking much about its deployment plans, other than to say some will be sent overseas in the near term to deployed Marine units. But Iraq, where Marines only last month defused a standoff at the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, is the only area where Marines face the prospect of urban warfare.

If Dragon Runner performs well, the Pentagon conceivably would be interested in buying hundreds of the robots. Hagen Schempf, a senior systems scientist at the Robotics Institute who was principal investigator for Dragon Runner, said he thinks applications in civilian law enforcement and firefighting might eventually outnumber those in the military.

"We might soon face a different problem here ---- how fast can we make how many?" said Schempf, who is co-founder and chairman of Automatika, which has licensed the Dragon Runner technology from CMU.

Moreau, a Pittsburgh-area native and graduate of Central Catholic High School, said Dragon Runner's origins go back three years, after the Marines re-examined their urban warfare tactics and identified a need for a small robotic scout and listening post.

A big problem in urban environments, he explained, is "situational awareness." Enemy and civilians are intermixed and fighting must occur in and around a wide variety of structures. A machine that could carry cameras, microphones and other sensors inside and around buildings could reduce the danger to Marine units that must enter those environments.

Some military units already use small robots like the Packbot robots that explored caves during the search for al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. But those robots were designed primarily for explosive ordnance disposal.Even before the Marines started looking for the technology to build their robotic scout, Schempf was pushing the idea of small, mobile robots and in search of a customer. During a tour of CMU by Brig. Gen. William Catto, then commander of the Warfighting Lab, Schempf got his ear and found him receptive to the idea.

That was three years ago. Dragon Runner today is a 9-pound electric vehicle about 15 inches long, a little less than a foot wide and just five inches in height. Moreau said Dragon Runner can operate in three modes:

Drive mode. The machine has a top speed of 20 mph and also can be operated slowly and deliberately. The video camera transmits color imagery to the operator, who controls it using a hand-held controller/view screen.

Sentry mode. It can operate as a stationary listening post, with a directional microphone and sensors that can detect motion up to 30 feet away. If it detects something, it can alert the operator by vibrating the hand control or sending a verbal "motion left" or "motion right" alert through an earphone.

Watch mode. Again, the vehicle would remain motionless, but would use its cameras to relay information.

Stairs are a given in most urban environments, but Dragon Runner was not designed to climb stairs. To do so would have added to its cost, weight, size and complexity, Moreau explained. Also, countermeasures to block a stair-climbing robot would have been easy.

Instead, the robot was designed so it could be heaved over stairs and other obstacles.

Several payloads are being developed and tested, Moreau said. Most of these are non-lethal sensor packages, he noted, though he acknowledged it would be possible to strap on an explosive device to turn it into a weapon.

For now, at $46,000 a copy for the prototypes, no one is eager to blow any Dragon Runners apart. But if and when the device goes into volume production, the price is likely to drop 40 to 50 percent, Moreau said.

The robot is nearing the end of its research and development stage this year. Depending on its performance overseas, changes could be made or it could be transferred to Marine Corps Systems Command, which could begin an acquisition program.