The main purpose of any robot is to help humans carry out certain tasks a lot faster and easier. And one of the best examples of this concept is the Recon Scout launched by Recon Robotics in the first half of 2007, a device that might prove extremely useful as a remote-controlled scouting unit for the special forces, police, etc.



The main purpose of the Recon Scout is to help users explore hostile or dangerous environments by providing real-time mission-critical reconnaissance video. And since it's very small, very tough and very maneuverable, the device can tackle just about any type of environment or mission and provide inside information that might ultimately decrease a certain mission's risk level.



As mentioned before, the Recon Scout is one tough robot. It is manufactured out of aircraft-grade aluminium and titanium, and can even come unscratched from a vertical drop of around 10 meters. Moreover, it's extremely easy to control, since all the users have to do is pull the activation pin and guide it via the operator control unit (OCU), and it's also quite easy to carry around, as it has a diameter of just around 3.81 centimeters.



Stealth is what the Recon Scout does best. It generates a maximum level of noise of around 20 decibels when moving, and is small enough to easily move under tables, chairs and other furniture. Moreover, the device can give a 360-degree scan of a room in less than five seconds, and can reverse its line of site in one second. And speaking of scanning, it's very important to mention the fact that the robot transmits a sharp and clear view in any situation. Its black and white image sensor has a 60-degree field of view on both the vertical and horizontal axis, and with a light sensitivity of 0.0003 lux it performs extremely well in very low light conditions.



Recon Robotics has begun selling the Recon Scout to law enforcement agencies in January 2007 for around $6,500 per kit (robot + control unit). This might seem like a pretty high price in the beginning, but it's not that much, considering the fact that it might actually save a lot of peoples' lives.