And although there wasn't an intergalactic bar filled with robots, 'droids and odd life forms from around the universe, there was a cocktail and social hour at the end of the event in an air-conditioned tent set up in the blazing summer heat of an Army training range.

Soldiers, civilian workers and vendors rubbed shoulders and tilted a few cold ones Thursday to celebrate the end of a trade show of robotics technology Texas style.

Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, and the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center served as co-hosts for the weeklong event.

Using robotics technology to keep soldiers out of harm's way has been a major agenda for Lynch.

TARDEC, a part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command headquartered at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Mich., bills itself as the nation's laboratory for advanced military automotive technology.

Dr. Grace Bochenek, director of TARDEC, said the organization's purpose is to put robotics into the hands of soldiers in an effort to save lives and avoid crippling injuries.

“Anything that is dangerous and you don't want a soldier to do, we will get a robot to do it,” she said.

Dr. Bochenek, whose doctorate is in systems engineering, said the robot rodeo was about the soldier and his safety.

“They are out sacrificing their lives every day and if we can put some of this robotics technology out there they won't have to do that anymore.”

Jeffery Jaster, a deputy associate director of Autonomous Systems and Intelligent Ground Systems for TARDEC, said the rodeo had two events. Monday through Wednesday the VIP event brought soldiers and vendors together so that products could be demonstrated. Thursday was media day where things of a classified nature were under wraps.

Jaster said soldiers observed two-hour demos and often were asked to take hands-on control of various bots.

“We wanted their feedback,” Jaster said. “These soldiers have experience out in the field and can tell us why or why not a unit would work in its application. They also told us how to make the robots more versatile for them.”

Jaster said the platforms ran from very small to the size of Humvees and trucks.

Lt. Col. Chip Daniel, a spokesman for the III Corps Strategic Initiative Center, said the main thrust of the research is to find vehicles that can ferret out and dispose of roadside bombs - the IEDs - and to serve as unmanned vehicles that can set up at a location and perform surveillance, also called persistent stare.

He said the No. 1 issue is road clearance.

“A soldier somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq is at the front of a long string of vehicles and his job is to look out for IEDs,” Daniel said.

“Obviously this is a dangerous mission we are asking our soldiers to do. They are literally the tip of the spearhead. If we can develop robot autonomous equipment to do that, we can remove the soldier from vulnerability.”

Daniel said it makes sense to let the robot take the risk.

Vendors were asked to come to the rodeo with two focus areas in mind, Daniel said. The first is autonomous navigation so a robot Humvee for instance can be told to go from point A to point B and it will map its own course and drive there. Sensors keep it from running into other vehicles and people along the way.

The second focus is persistent stare - long-term surveillance. In Iraq, the Army has determined that where one IED makes a successful kill, insurgents will plant more at the same spot, Daniel said. If a two-man patrol is assigned to sit in a vehicle and watch a stretch of road or intersection, the enemy will target that patrol and attack it.

A robot can be sent to watch and if it sees a car stop and drop something by the roadside, it notes that fact for its controllers, Daniel said.

Vendors at the rodeo had half a dozen models of small robots that look like small tanks that can be sent to investigate something on the roadside. Others were large crane-like arms mounted on the back of pickups that could reach down and pick up a suspected bomb.

Others were Humvees and trucks that navigate their own way to locations and don't need to be tended by a controller.

Carlos Martinez with ABB Robotics demonstrated a robot arm on the back of a truck.

“If it picks up an IED and it explodes it can destroy the claw fingers, of course,” Martinez said. “But we fit this model with a long extension arm with the claw on the end. If it is blown up, we can put a replacement claw on very quickly.”

Troy Takach, president and CEO of Kairos Autonami, had a team demonstrating a robot SUV. It had a small tank-like robot on a steel platform affixed to the rear. The SUV could be sent into a dangerous area and stop, then unload its tank robot, which would go investigate a suspicious object.

Jaster said small bots of that size are in use in Iraq now that can go into a building and map it so that soldiers outside won't be ambushed when they enter.

“It's all about taking the risk away from soldiers and saving lives,” he said.