Slashdot Mirror
Robot Wars
EyesWideOpen writes "According to this New York Times article (free reg. req.) the Office of Naval Research is coordinating an effort to determine what it will take to build a system that will make it possible for autonomous vehicles (in the air and on the ground), or A. V.'s, to serve as soldiers on the battlefield. The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.' The article also mentions that the A. V.'s will have the ability to send high resolution color video as well as still photographs using MPEG-4 compression. Pretty interesting stuff."
Won't these people learn? Didn't they see the Terminator? Don't they know if they build this it will come back and bite them in the ass? Haven't I asked enough questions for one post?
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
In order to be pollitically correct are they going to build a female version called MinuteMaid?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
So what they're going to do is basically conduct future wars like in certain RTS games- i.e. we see in certain RTS games in FMV footage, that "you" are some guy controlling remote units via some terminal in some concrete bunker.
This of course has been predicted by many SF authors for years, and even surpassed where we have the case of AIs continuing to generate units and attack each other long after all the humans are dead.
Karma will now be dispensed, yea! I say, dispensed to those posters who can cite authors and works as examples of this.
graspee
And they can use that wonderfully accurate facial recognition technology to differentiate between good and bad guys and kill the right one.
The official web site. The quality and the amount of information on this web site seems to indicate that this project is in a very early stage, i.e. they haven't really done much. The links on the side mostly go to other UCLA departments. Altough, they do have some interesting looking demo units available. They don't seem to pack much of a punch, though ;).
Maybe somebody from the project is reading this, and can provide some real information?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Well war ethics are going to have to be completely re-written if this happens, because previously the idea was that to win a war you had to send some soldiers to their death. If we don't have to send in soldiers anymore then the American public will be easily distracted from our hideously hypocritical foreign policy decisions since they don't actually have to worry about their sons and daughters.
I dunno. Ask a soldier.
If, 30 seconds later, your ass hasn't been kicked, thank him for his restraint. :-)
> I guess the little suckers could go where men could not and do things that men would not...
Yes - that's precisely the idea. Robots are a force multiplier - you can send them on high-risk missions that you wouldn't want to risk a man for.
In that sense, the use of robots in war isn't much different from robots in space exploration. There are some jobs (like geology on Mars) that a man might be better at than a robot. There are many, many, many jobs (like mapping the entire Martian surface, or missions to the outer planets), where the robot is the right tool for the job.
I am far less worried about hacking then some people seem to be. What I am worried about is that they will obey commands. I mean what happens when say these are sent against Cuba, but the General/Admiral decides that he really want all of south florida to retire in, and captures it with his drone army. Normally it isn't possible becuase American troops are (suposed to be) loyal to thier country first and not thier officers, but now you are reducing the number of people needed to enable a coup or power grab. Less people is both easier, and more liekly to be sucessful.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
While this story isn't really new (we already have flying drones, cameras, etc.), I have to say that I am disturbed by it.
If robots are put to use as our new soldiers, what restraint will there be on those people in the military who are already too eager to send our forces overseas to police/invade/kill others? No one will complain that their sons/daughters are paying with their lives, and it will only make it easier to engage in armed conflicts. This is the nightmare of the future, when everyone sends their robots to fight each other.
There will be those who say, "but anything that saves our boys from dying is good." But this is not a sustainable policy -- it's not ethical for us to want to come up with a force that is only to our benefit, so that we can fight without the consequences of fighting. If everyone took that position, we'd be fighting all the time.
The true sustainable solution would be to work on the real causes of conflict in the world, and spend our billions of dollars to try to educate and help peoples so that we're not the target of violence. I tell you, it's much more efficient than trying to put out the fire once it's started. Why can't people see that long term issue, and work on that, rather than just coming up with new/better ways to kill others in the short term?
if (target.headgear == "turban")
{
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Everyone knows all you have to do is fly your ship into the hangar of the mothership and destroy its reactor, and all the drones will cease working.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Let me give some possible scenarios. After reading the scenarios, tell me if it sounds plausible for real-world use.
/., somebody tell me how many variables are in a live battle. What happens when the system is exceeded? Suddenly, the information that is new needed for combat can not be transmitted because it does not exist.
Scenario One: System has tracked enemy troop movement and friendly troop movement. Enemy troops and friendly troops clash in battle. At this point, on the grid, everyone looks like they are in the same place. There's no way to distinguish friendly from enemy. As the combattants regroup to different geographical points, an airstrike arrives. There has been no time for communications to propogate to the system which group is the friend and the enemy, and it is doubtful that the system has a database of the facial structure of every single friendly in our forces. What happens? Does the system pick randomly one group and tell the autopilot to bomb that group? Does it use probabilities? What is the acceptable margin of error, when that error is a 1000 lb bomb falling on you? Who in our government decides the number of our own solder that we can kill and still think it is ok?
Scenario Two: The system is flying above a battlefield. A situation develops that the programmers of the software running these things never thought of. How does the system react? Please, and I speak mainly to any combat veteran at
I ask you, would you trust an unmanned computer to shield you from a live machine gun pointed at you? I wouldnt. A manned computer, maybe, but not unmanned.
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as found on the best Simpsons site http://www.snpp.com
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
Blizzard Entertainment announed its entry into the military control software market.
Our advanced unit control interface will allow the easy, dynamic control of a large number of military units of various types. Unit divisions can be formed on-the-fly allowing for easy regrouping of units.
Our revolutionary interface provides not only visual information but also features our advanced Aural Notification of Unit Situation system (A.N.U.S.). Simple audio queues inform the operator what military units are up to both on and off screen. Aural queues such as "daboo", "zug-zug" and "work completed" will inform operators of the current status of infrastructure units and codes such as "We're under attack!" will provide data pertaining to attack units.
a3c6 0e89 b1ec aa4d d630 26c8 d07e 7eed 8148 5503 02b4 dfaa 9922 b28d 0820 c4af
or better yet:
if ("turban".equals(target.headgear)) {
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}
since I sure wouldn't want my war robot going mental because of bad pointer arithmetic
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"