Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of 69. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 6:14 PM for 11h 07m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 53.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets at 5 PM, and Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress establishes the Continental Navy (predecessor of the United States Navy).
Joseph Trevithick reports Robot Dogs Now Have Assault Rifles Mounted On Their Backs (‘Robot dogs have been met with equal parts fascination and fear by the public, but their utility for military applications is becoming undeniable’):
Ghost Robotics and SWORD International have teamed up to create a rifle-toting “robot dog.” Called the Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle, or SPUR, the system adds a 6.5mm Creedmoor rifle from SWORD to one of Ghost Robotics’ quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles, or Q-UGVs.
The SPUR made its debut on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s main annual convention in Washington, D.C., which opened yesterday. Though Ghost Robotics is partnered with a number of other companies to explore defense and security applications, among others, for its Q-UGVs — which you can read more about in this past War Zone feature — this appears to be the first example of one of these unmanned systems with an actual weapon mounted on it. Unarmed examples of the Q-UGV are notably already in limited use with the U.S. Air Force’s 325th Security Forces Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and are being tested by other units within that service.
The exact configuration of the 6.5mm gun inside the SPUR module — how much ammunition it contains, and how hard it might be to reload — are all unclear. Ghost Robotics has said that SPUR can be instructed remotely to chamber the first round from an unloaded state, as well as clear the chamber and safe the gun.
Humanity had a good run…