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."

Comments

What's the progress?

[Pulzar]

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?

Re:Skynet, here we come

[jejones]

Won't these people learn? Didn't they see the Terminator?

Haven't you read the Bolo stories? If I remember Laumer's timeline, we're way overdue for GM to start on the Mark I. :)

<serious>I share Asimov's disgust with the pessimism and "there are things man was not meant to know" attitude, a disgust which pushed him to write his robot stories. There are good and evil humans (I see the Bill Gates Borg icon as I type....)--what is it about AI that makes people think it will automatically be evil?</serious>

For the honor of the regiment,
jejones

On hacking.

[yasth]

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.

Gah. I can see it now...

[American AC in Paris]

if (target.headgear == "turban")
{
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}

Have movies taught us NOTHING?

[Scutter]

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.

Obligitory Simpson's Quote

[grip]

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