The merchants of war sell their wares at Tampa Convention Center

TAMPA — Packed with robots and trucks and guns and drones, the Tampa Convention Center's exhibition hall this week has been transformed into a showroom for the latest in war gadgets.

It's all part of the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, a major annual confab that brings military commanders together with defense contractors to figure out what commandos need in a dangerous and ever-changing world.

The anchor, of course, is U.S. Special Operations Command, which has an annual budget of several billion dollars to spend on commando-specific goods and services.

This year, about 350 companies set up shop at the conference, hoping to attract SoCom, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base.

"This conference is important to give people a look at what we have," said Jeff Givens, president and chief executive officer of Graystone Defense LLC, makers of the Motoped Survival Bike.

A souped-up motorcross bike, it's designed to allow operators to quietly traverse rugged terrain.

The motorized bikes, which cost about $4,000 each, can travel about 200 miles on a gallon of gas and have a top speed of about 30 mph, Givens said.

The bike can give commandos the ability to go a long distance and avoid roads.

On the other side of the hall, a company that spun off from iRobot, creator of the Roomba vacuum-cleaning robot, was pitching a line of robots that can detect improvised explosive devices, chemical, biological and radiological weapons or even fire a 12-gauge shotgun or other weapons.

"This is a throwable robot," said Gary Stair, a former Army bomb squad technician, as he put his right hand on the Endeavor Robotics 110 First Look. A small, black device with treads, it weighs about 5 pounds and can be tossed into a window or motor across rough surfaces to detect bombs.

A slightly larger version can fit in a backpack. At 22 pounds, it weighs about a quarter of similar devices.

"It can even do a pull-up," said Stair, senior robotics product manager for Endeavor Robotics.

A larger model, the 510, can be outfitted with an array of sensors and allows one soldier to do the work of six or seven, all while trying to deal with an IED, Stair said.

"This was the one I used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Stair.

The robots range in price from about $20,000 for the smallest model to $120,000 for the 510, Givens said.

The devices have been used by the military since 2002, he said.

There are plenty of large contractors on site as well.

Among other items, Northrup Grumman is pitching something called the Hellhound, designed to be a light reconnaissance vehicle.

Made of carbon fiber, it was designed to carry six people.

The goal is to have a light, fast vehicle that can rumble over rough terrain and have enough firepower to stave off enemies, said Jeff Wood, the company's director of business development. It comes with a remote controlled cannon mounted on top that is operated with a joy stick inside the compartment. There is also a laser that can be used to counter enemy drones or whatever else the military wants to use it for, Wood said.

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He declined comment on the cost of the Hellhound, which is currently a prototype with no customers yet.

Not everything on display is hardware.

DigitalGlobe, a geospatial intelligence business with an office in Tampa, offers data, modeling and predictive analytics by combining its satellite imagery with propriety software to accurately identify and measure trends and understand connections to economic, environmental and human activities.

DigitalGlobe will launch its latest satellite — WorldView 4 — in September. The company also launched what it calls Uber for imagery analysis, a crowdsourcing system called GeoHIVE, which allows users to earn money by analyzing DigitalGlobe satellite imagery. All you have to do is log on, get validated and when that's completed, earn money by identifying images. To take part, go to geohive.digitalglobe.com