How would you like to use your Wiimote to defuse bombs? Well, it won't exactly be you doing the defusing - a robot by the name of Packbot will be doing the actual work. All you need to do is control it, as the US Army is doing. This innovative idea actually came from a couple of engineers who modified the Wiimote for the US Army's use.

For more motion-sensing bomb disposal news, turn to the full article after the jump.

Now here's an invention that Magneto, master of magnetism, would truly fear. The army has recently developed an issue Humvee utility vehicle using nonmetallic parts comprising of fiberglass, balsa wood and carbon reinforcements held together with resin.

The prototype Humvee, built by TPI Composite Inc., is around 900 pounds lighter than its conventional counterpart. This design was proposed to save on weight needed to carry extra armor to better protect soldiers from roadside bombs in the Middle East.

Also, such a lighter design might prevent such accidents while still sufficiently protecting any passengers inside the vehicle. Because a standard Humvee weighs around 10,000 to 12,000 pounds, it usually rides low to the ground, and thus prone to triggering any mines planted on the road.

The new Humvee was a culmination of an 18 month research by AM General Corp. and the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command. And while the army officials are still unsure when tests on the vehicle will begin, such a machine would undoubtedly be useful out on the field as a definite life-saver.

Since the start of the war in Iraq, robots have been employed for various tasks such as mine detection, bomb disposal, and scouting. However, t is only recently that the US army has deployed the world's first armed robots called "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" or SWORDS for short.

These robots are bomb disposal units outfitted with M249 machine guns. The amazing thing about these weapons is the fact that it can be given a variety of payloads including M40 grenades and even rockets.

The SWORDS program manager Michael Zecca has given word that none of the robots have yet fired any ordinance in actual combat, but that they will probably be doing so soon.

These robots were declared battle ready as far back as 2004, however, safety concerns have prevented it from being used until now. The two major problems included lag as well as the robots penchant for spinning out of control. Both problem could potentially lead to friendly fire losses due.

The units were sent back for further modifications such as a safety mechanism or "kill switch" that can be activated in case the robots start acting weird. The lag problem which led to reaction delays of up to eight seconds was solved by making the SWORDS react only to specified and timed commands. In addition to this, the engineers have implemented a three step process that each robot has to go through to arm its weapon.

This technology will undoubtedly save countless American lives in the battlefields of Iraq. Hopefully, it can even be further refined for a variety of other tasks such as medical evacuations and supply delivery.

Yep, as odd as the title of this post sounds, MIT researchers are already putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip. The whole thing would end up the size of a quarter, and the resulting device could run around 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight. The engine can power laptops, cell phones, iPods, radios, future versions of the PSP... the list goes on and on.

Okay, so how do you go about building a coin sized fuel-burning engine?

Well you'll need a compressor, a combustion chamber, a spinning turbine, and almost everything else you see in a normal engine. If you've looked inside the hood of your car long enough, you know what we're talking about.

To make the whole thing really tiny, the MIT researchers turned to etched silicon wafers. In fact, their micro-engine is made up of six, piled up like pancakes and bonded together. Each wafer is a single crystal that has its atoms perfectly aligned, so that it is outlandishly strong.

Making single micro-engines costs an arm and a leg, so to save on funds, the researches made up to 60-100 components on a large wafer that they then carefully cut apart into single units.

At the moment the team is having difficulties with getting the combustion to work properly. You see, inside that mini-combustion chamber, the turbine blades spin at 20,000 revolutions per second - that's 100 times faster than in jet engines. Imagine trying to manage that speed in something the size of a quarter. Thankfully, they claim that cooling all that speed down has so far been manageable.

The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Obviously, they're very much interested in shrinking the huge battery packs that soldiers are now carrying for their electronic equipment.

My grandmother once had a saying: "There is a little Good in all Evil."

This probably applies to warfare as much as anything. Despite its horror, the suffering and damage it wreaks, wars have been the soil in which many technologies have grown. Take, for example, the "walkie-talkie" of World War II. Who could have imagined it would eventually evolve into those slick little devices known as mobile phones...? Or Germany's V-2 rockets...originally designed to visit death and destruction, this device eventually became a vehicle that took us to the surface of the moon...and let's not forget the huge advances in surgery and medicine...

That said, when I look over this list, I cannot help but be horrified at humankind's penchant for bloodshed - yet hopeful at humankind's ingenuity that may yet spell the difference between survival and extinction for our species.

Here then, is the United States Army's list of the Top Ten Inventions of The Year 2005:

1. Combat Application Tourniquet. With highways all over the industrialized world experiencing carnage to rival the Battle of Verdun and Gettysburg, I suspect EMT's and civilian medical personnel will be happy to have this one.

2. Persistent Threat Detection System. "An aerostat-based persistent surveillance and sensor set." Probably some good potential applications for civilian law-enforcement, here.

3. Fixed Site/Vehicle Mounted Gunfire Detection. A gunshot detection and locator that police being fired upon by snipers will find quite useful. One imagines game hunters (like Dick "Sure Shot" Cheney's friend) would be able to employ this to keep track of other hunters.

4. M100 Grenade Rifle Entry Munition. A lightweight grenade launcher that allows personnel to blow open doors and windows without risk of injury to the shooter.

5. M192 Lightweight Ground Mount. Compact and collapsible. About 6.5 pounds lighter than its predecessor, which can make a great deal of difference on a long march. (And to think that soldiers of the Roman Empire carried 80 pound field packs...) No doubt, field photographers will appreciate the technology that went into this one.

6. M782 Multi Option Fuse for Artillery (MOFA). Combines proximity, precision timing, delay and point detonation functions in one handy device. Should be great for lunar or asteroid mining, someday.

7. Over-the-horizon Satellite Communications and Improved Dual AN/PRC-117F Command and Control Console. Considering how many idiots on the road attempt to pass me on blind curves or hills, something like this should be integrated into every automobile and attached to an alarm.

8. Countermeasure Protection System.  Jams IED land mines. In memory of the late Diana Spencer, who demonstrated so much concern for the young victims of leftover land mines, I hope this device finds its way into the hands of those whose job it is to clean up those hateful devices...

9. Dual Band Antenna. "Unprecedented wideband frequency span from a single antenna structure." I leave that to your imagination (isn't 3,000 channels enough?)

10. Fido Explosives Detector. A portable IED land mine detector weighing under 3 pounds, performing about as well as a bomb-sniffing dog. See #8, above.