Shot-putting Urbie over a two-meter chain-link fence, Alan DiPietro, a staff researcher at iRobot of Somerville, Mass., shows how soldiers might use this remotely operated robot in urban warfare. Intended for surveillance, Urbie is a low-profile, remotely operated machine that crawls over obstacles on bulldozer-like tracks, beaming images of what it sees to its operators. The robot is intended to be exceptionally durable, capable of flipping over and surviving shocks that would destroy most other robots. But the company still has a ways to go, one of Urbie's caterpillar tracks shattered when DiPietro threw it over the fence. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 146.