American Notes ROBOTS

He talks. He walks. He does push-ups. He sweats. And he is almost inhumanly brave. Well, strike the almost. Manny is a robot, though with a body temperature of 98.6 0 F and a chest that heaves with each "breath," he is astonishingly lifelike. Come October, he will wade into clouds of nerve gas, which his owner, the U.S. Army, would never dare subject a real soldier to. Manny's mission, at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, will be to test protective clothing -- for example, to determine whether walking, bending or sweating might cause the clothing to leak and let gas through. Built for $2.35 million by Battelle's Pacific Northwest Laboratories and based largely on Disney technology, this is one expensive G.I. -- but then the taxpayer needn't worry about feeding or paying him.