Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Battlefield Robots
Alien54 writes "The Pentagon is drafting the Segway two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops. Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, says he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military."
I, for one, welcome our new walking killbot overlords.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Jonny Five is alive!
I would at least hope for something a bit more speedy/agile. Seems like these things would be overpriced tin cans used for RPG round practice in the field.
I find it particularly amusing that Cartoon Network just had/is having an Iron Giant marathon and this article shows up. :)
I want the army to have battle mechs. Nuff said
Life is not for the lazy.
"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. Thank you."
Instead of re inventing the wheel, just create a device that you can turn the machines of todays society against the enemy... who needs a segway when you can just have it pitch a pepsi into the head of someone!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The scene: a dim room in the Pentagon, two generals are sharing a bottle of malt with an admiral.
"Just imagine: a robot army that can think for itself, stand upright, speak clear English..."
"It sounds like a dream, but with those new scooters, it could happen."
"At last, an Army we control..."
"... no more drugs, booze,..."
"... or sleep, even!"
"There's the problem of terrain..."
"Yes, those wheels don't work well in brush."
"Maybe we can make them larger? Like HUGE?"
"Self-balancing tanks? Sounds interesting..."
"... and expensive. I like it."
"... and then we can keep the scooters for backup"
"You mean 'OPERATION NO DISSENT'?"
"Most of our cities are 'wheelchair friendly' already"
"Excellent. And we can just use the tanks in the others."
"Bottle's empty. MAJOR! MORE MALT!"
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How do you explain to a robot the difference between an enemy and a civilian........ In the middle east a shepard has a beard, a turban and a kalashnikov. Enemy troops has a beard, a turban and a kalashnikov. This seems to me to be another pentagon wanking fantasy. (Now for the offtopic rant part....)Then again this has never troubled the US forces. (see. Panama, Sudan, Afganistan, Iraq, Korea, Vietnam). If only they were to spend as much money and effort on peace. With this you even create new customers for you products.
On a second look, it appears that these robots do not, in fact, walk. It might've been helpful to read the article. Or the summary. Or something about what the hell a segway is.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
finally we know the real use for segways. i never bought all of that propaganda for them in the first place since the pogo-ball was imo way cooler. wait.. looks like this idea has its backround at MIT, I guess thats what IT was all about, they just forgot the M.
So if this project (and others that the US-military is funding), turns out to be succesfull, and allows machines like segway to do most of the tasks humans can do, can we expect them to replace human soldiers? Still I wonder if it wouldn't be bether to equip such machines with more than two wheels... A high center of gravity is good for the robots cameras and sensors, but it also make it easier for enemies to spot it.
Not quite showtime! I guess even Big O had to come from somewhere...
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
No, the humans would be following the robots, carrying spare battery packs and very long cables.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Ok, we will all concede that losing fewer lives is the goal. However, there is one good part about potential losing lives. It is this, the people of your country (assuming that it is a free country) are not going to tolerate unnecessary loss of life. This keeps most leaders from provoking wars unnecessarily. If the cause is to stop Hitler, people understand that we may take heavy losses, but in the end it is worth is.
If the cause is removing Milosovic from power, people are going to tolerate much fewer losses before they start to demand that we bring our boys home.
Removing this from the battlefield of the future does two things, one it will allow future world leaders to bully less technically advanced countries even more than they do now and two it will increase the amount of terrorism directed at civilians. If I can't kill your people on the battlefield because there are no "people" on the battlefield, I'll do what I have to do to take the war to your "people".
We should proceed with caution.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Dean Kamen mades some useful inventions in his time, but the segway just doesn't seem to meet his list of impressive accolades such as the stair climbing wheelchair and dialysis equipment. Now the military has plans to convert this thing into a militray robot, the idea seems a bit too odd to work. As wonderful as the segway may be for paved sidewalks of the United States, these things are far too slow and bulky to be of much use on the battlefield. Using two large wheels, even with gyroscopic assist, is a bad idea for something that should be as adaptable as a battlefield robot. We realized that wheels were a bad solution to handling varied terrain (hence tanks have treads) a long time ago, why is it suddenly fashionable again? Have the laws of physics suddenly changed? The next step in technology should involve robots with legs (similar to insects for most stable configuration). Though not nearly as efficient as wheels on flat terrain it is quite possibly the most adaptable form of locomotion.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
...what's the point of smart robots?
Maybe the bots will lead a revolution against their masters?
A Million Machine March on the Pentagon...
one man , 500 pounds of C4 and a car from blowing you and your checkpoints to smithereens ?
it seems there are 2 wars being fought, the fantasy one where USA is fighting this imaginary foe (like aliens or something) which has a technological superiority beyond all measure and therefore the USA must invent the most sophisticated solutions it can find
and then there is the reality of war which is fighting men who do not wear a uniform with RPG's and donkeys or suicide bombers that look like women or young men and will happily push the button
perhaps if USA went to war with itself it could test all this crap its spewing out of its R&D , iam just suprised that the population doesnt mind pissing money away on these Contractor-gets-rich-at-taxpayers-expense schemes, then again violence is the last bastion of the stupid.
enjoy
going to run on Windows CE too?
As a smart and good man said: "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding... Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." It seems we'll have to amend his philosophy that "The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service." tho.
As for "The robots would navigate and communicate with each other autonomously, but a human would oversee the whole network.", they'll still get orders from the kind of people who volunteer to join, erm, wait, where's my asbestos suit?
Old joke -
Lt: Are they attacking from the east or the south?
RSHT: Yes.
Lt: Excuse me?
RSHT: Sir, yes sir!
Dean Kamen excuses his lack of disgust with this statement: "You build a car and it can either be used as an ambulance, or it can drive your troops around." He fails to recognize that it is not necessary to turn a car into a troop transporter in order to use a car as an ambulance. It's one thing to create technology which has ambivalent uses, it's a different thing to welcome both constructive and destructive uses.
I know this is offtopic but there's nowhere else to put it so hopefully someone else reading at -1 will see this. Am I the only one who finds the trolls on Slashdot really funny? Whether they're insulting the editors, predicting the death of *BSD, or making fun of failed would-be first posters, they always manage to make me laugh out loud. I'm not a troll myself but I still find them funny. Keep up the good work ;)
These people need to be careful. Toying with intelligent robots is only the beginning of the end.
How would they get the infrastructure in place to charge these things in a hot desert setting? Or in the mountains of Afghanistan. I mean, the terrain itself would be impossible to negotiate.
And the problem in both those places is that the enemy is unknown. Every civilian is a potential guerilla.
Seems like a solution, but to the wrong problem.
It appears that war has segregated into several models:
1. Bushwar/guerilla warfare, involving low-tech small arms, often young soldiers, civilians, etc. This is the most common kind of war, the one with the most casualties (think: 3m dead in Congo in the last 5 years, by one estimate), also the one we hear least about. Robots? Big joke.
2. The Empire Strikes Back: hi-tech warfare against regimes or populations that have the wrong opinions, the wrong politics, or just happen to be in the wrong place. Robots? Not needed, it all happens by satellite-controlled smartbombs.
3. Police operations: friendly or unfriendly ground occupation with the goal of creating some kind of stability. Robots? Not likely, this is the most delicate form of aggression.
4. Entertainment: keep the public happy with videos of our heroes wiping out the enemy. Robots? Excellent - fewer of those body bags, and more potential for explosions.
Sigh.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
... all I need to do is invent the light-sabre, and I'll be essentially invulnerable, 'cos not one of them will be able to hit me :-) Cool :-)
Oh yeah, and become a jedi. Damn.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Ba dum dum da dum.
Ba dum dum da dum.
Please, what a superficial understanding of history.
Russia and China both owe their greatness to the Mongols, and the Western imperialist powers. Inda owes a debt of thanks to the British. We Americans of course owe the British, but more ourselves and our own civil war. Peoples are as much a product of the wars they lost as they are of those they've won. A good sound conqueroring and associated purge would do the middle east and africa some good. Not to mention the Serbians, they could use a lot of conquering and purging, you'd think two world wars in a century would be enough for those bitches.
If you think Europe would be any different from any of the other feudal societies, technology included, that dot our unremarkable rock without the wars and attendant homogenizing forces, think harder.
Eh, and so it begins... we have our Terminators... and they're based on Segways. And you'd think they'd be a bit more intimidating, no?
- A
And if your curious what a robotic war might be like, look no further than Spiders.
it would be pretty funny to see these things going in circles after someone shot out a tire on them . . .
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
"Researchers say potential applications for the robots include performing search missions on the battlefield, transporting injured soldiers to safety, or following humans around while hauling their gear."
Of course the "potential applications" given to the public are all politically correct, but knowing the DoD the true intended applications if for something more sinister like reducing the number of human heads needed for an occupation force.
Right now we have our forces spread out all over the world. We're still in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we're still "keeping check" in Bosnia.
With a team of several smart robots communicating with a much smaller set of actual humans, we could occupy larger areas, with fewer personel.
Not too far fetched when you consider that we've basically conquered two nations in the past 2 years, and especially with the criticism the effort in Iraq has received since the body count after the war surpassed the count during war.
Maybe it's about time to revisit the Geneva convention for an addendum or two...
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
...now that Ahhnold has a day job!
just look at va lairIE/robbIE, & how they pretend for/defend the phonIE payper liesense stock markup fraud badtoll 'fields' of themselves, & their corepirate nazi softwar gangster execrable 'sponsors'?
mynuts won: talk about fauxking bots, ignoring 'stuff that matters', for little more monIE?
...this is eggsactly what they need. Imagine all the eggs they could deliver to the poor, repressed people of insert_name_of_country_with_oil_here when the US liberates them from the evil dictator insert_name_of_embarrassing_US_funded_right_wing_l oony_here
What OS will they be running?
I shudder to think what a hacker or two can do to a squadron of Microsoft Windows XP based robots that communicate using 802.xx wireless protocols.
War chalking and war driving taken literally!
funny as hell!!! :P
"Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, says he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military." Well considering the European Segways are produced and Marketed by Heckler & Koch owning BAe, he has already started sucking military Koch. I always thought the Segway was Kamen's way of demonstrating and selling a better patented gyro for missiles than any real advances in personal transport.
Too hard to click the "Post Anonymously" option when you flame your own posts? Bloody amateurs.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
in a primitive form.
My toenail-sized country is littered with hundreds, soon thousands, of red-light and speed control traffic cameras. They are robotic in that they operate autonomously against targets. They think on their own and communicate with troops.
This can be interpreted as small-scale warfare from an oppressive regime against civilians, and guerilla troops have responded by setting them on fire using a gasoline filled tire.
It's an ugly world outside, and it's only going to get worse.
I think the embedded OS for these robots MUST be Linux.
I mean, how else could this story have made it to Slashdot? Ever?
"Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun."
Segway technology applied to new hi-tech wheelbarrows, shopping carts, toy wagons, wheelchairs, etc.. anything that currently carries weight, needs to remain upright and is manpowered 90% of the time. Segway's gyro-motor controls would make these tools 1000% more useful and convenient.
I can easily see a wheelchair at the price point. Some redundant non-electric safety would need to be implemented.
I can also see a severly dumbed down version used for shopping carts, generic wagons of all sorts... two-wheeled payload carriers. You have a device that's only purpose is to keep itself upright. The cheapest version just does that. A more expensive one would have a motor for forward motion. More expensive would have a proximity monitor and could follow you at an exact distance and have collision detectors to avoid running into things.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Soldier 1: SHOOT! SHOOT! Damn piece of crap!
Robot: *bzzz* *System Slashdotted, rebooting in 35 seconds*
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Sounds to me like functionoids based on the Segway would be much more useful for keeping down domestic unrest, in clean and uncluttered US cities, than they would in war zones rife with craters, gravel, and corpses.
Geeks need to consider the ramifications of the technology they help to create; otherwise you're selling your own freedoms.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
We don't want them answering ads for viagra, now do we?
I was in Radio Shack just two nights ago buying some Cat-5 cable. They had advertised 30 ft. for $9.97 but when I got there the price on the shelf said $19.97. I brought this to the clerks attention and all he did was raise an eybrow and say to me in a very strange manner, "LOL, Battlefield robot Segways."
True patriots are never to tired to find faults within their country.
They say it's Human Transporter, but now we see that it was just a clever ruse all along... its true name is Segway Human Terminator.
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
Who in their right mind would base a robot soldier on a platform that has to expend energy to STAND STILL. It is one of the principal advantages of a robot that it can stand around idle without burning much power (unlike people).
So now you take away even that. Brilliant.
What's next, soft skin that covers fragile power conduits? How about a CPU that's exposed to the elements? Oh oh, I got it, a robot soldier that can only operate in environments with temperatures between 50 and 105 degrees farenheit.
America seems desperate to introduce all kind of high tech gadgets to make war easier. Yesterday there was a short news story about afghanistan on the BBC. A US post in a contested area was visited by reporters. At night the post comes under attack from rocket fire. The US calls in artilary on where it thinks the rockets have come from. In the morning they go out and check. What they find is missles setup with timers aimed at the post (some had not gone off). So all these highly equipped soldiers plus all the awacs stuff flying up there totally failed to spot a bunch of guys coming in, setting up a few missles and leaving again.
The US took heavy fire (no losses this time or at least not shown) the enemy took ZERO fire. Not one round.
Says it all really.
US army. War is putting a lot of soldiers on the ground with guns and getting them to kill more of the enemy then the enemy kills of you. This has worked for thousand of years. You are not going to be able to chance it. You want to because you don't want another vietnam. Well now you got two vietnams. War is hell but more importantly war only works when it is hell. Only when you totally slaughter the enemy will you convince the enemy to stop fighting. Little clever robots are not going to do this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What about using Power Wheels instead of a Segway? Hell, they can hold 130 pounds and move 5 mph. That's a machine gun and plenty of ammo.
Plus, I imagine Fisher Price makes much sturdier equipment than most military contractors anyway.
Phear Children.
What is the deal with this thing? It's one of those 'wow cool' inventions with no practical use at all.
m plicated_than_it_needs_to_be
Once again, I refer you to maddox: http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=segway_more_co
The simple answer is they are very expendable and can be made very structurally strong.
.5 of a second after it is attacked to lay a burst at it's attacker.
Now the longer answer: A ruggedized sedgeway (or better yet something that can place itself into a permanently low power stable position, eg 3 wheels or more.) would be able to be very rugged, armoured and would be fairly easy to repair. The same can not be said for soldiers. A armoured trash can, can afford to wait until it is attacked before returning fire safe in the fact it is not important, is highly survivable and will probably manage
Now given the fact that mass production sedgeways cost $5000 odd and after you equip it for military purposes probably $50000. It is still a great deal. In fact I can see 10 000 being purchased at the drop of a hat.
Have two or three trundling along as point teams on patrol. (The bad guys can't let em get too close so they become the targets and that exposes the bad guys.) Set them as forward guards and you can keep the potential bad guys back. Make some that are very menacing (Big, black, with big stubby riot guns, maybe some big speakers, Bright strobes and nasty voices) and they could be very successful crowd controllers as well.
Most of the time in guerilla and urban areas they they sit still (unless patrolling) and so you could have 100's of guards set and flagging themselves for attention if something unusual or out of their ROE takes place. So you get 100 guys sitting in a comfy baracks somewhere, controlling, interdicting or at least observing a large area. Rather than 5 times that number actually being out in the thick of it.
Where they fail is in snatch sweeps where house searches are required but even there they can be used to secure rear areas of the searching troops, establish stop points and to act as covering roles or even anti sniper roles.
Some bigger ones can even act as a pack beast for supplies or maybe even crew served weapons. (Is that 50 kilo's of Machine gun and 1500 rounds of ammo weighing you down, just chuck it on the section trashcan) Having the Command element of a platoon gifted with 4 heavy weapon cans would make most soldiers, a lot happier. The extra firepower and much lessened load will be appreciated.
In more regular combat they are given sweep zones and much more liberal ROE. See enemy, (however defined) shoot it if close, otherwise identify them to command and assist in calling in fire.
Obviously development costs are huge to field basic autonamous combat machines. (somewhat less for command guided or standby and command machines) but once the work is done. A nation can probably afford to buy a fairly large number as supplements to their infantry and other forces. For example even at $50000 a copy a 100 000 would cost 5 billion but allow increased flexibility in the order of 30-50 000 additional on the ground troops. With almost certainly lower ongoing costs, much more rapid return to service if damaged ( A sedeway gets a wheel blown off it can be replaced. The same happen to a man and he's not playing soldier anymore.) and seriously reduced political consequences if one is totalled compared to a man, militaries will love them even if they only act as guards and scouts.
The key tech troubles are the power supply, the logic system, the comms system and possibly security. Loco, navigation, observation and weapon handling is effectively doable right now.
Computer minds can be so easily corrupted. They so no real difference between being told to kill the enemy or to kill anything that moves. They would comply to either command and keep doing it till there task is done. I would fear the day if an enemy force could hack in one and have instant eyes and ears of what is going on, probably a built in GPS unit as well. Deciding to kill something is not a task made for a computer mind, unless they have human operators somewhere in the mix, only bad will come of it.
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
Western sensibilities tell us that there is a difference between a combatant and a civilian. Yet no one has told that to the other side.
During WW2 we didn't really care and perhaps that guilted some people. Eventually with the UN is became the default handcuffs to put on any Western power.
The problem with separating the two is that in the long run the wars are prolonged and so is the suffering. You cannot win a war by just killing the other sides soldiers, they will just make more. To win a war you have to break their will and ability to wage it. People will flee their oppressive regimes if that same cannot protect them from the folly of their actions.
Spending on "peace" as the previous write mentions with his only anti-US rant; forgetting more people died at the hands of other countries - usually within those same countries he listed by their own people; only gets you as far as your enemy wants you too.
In other words, get out of your ignorant dream world. I suppose we should ignore what happens in other countries as long as it doesn't happen here? Well some of them decided to take their little spat to our shores, what are we supposed to do? Just forget about it? Worked well with the USS Cole eh?, the first Trade Center bombing, the barracks bombings in Lebanon and Saudia Arabia?
Summary, it is stupid to spend on peace when the other guy isn't. Its even dumber to pretend that one side is the problem. We live is a violent world in which most of those loonies use the US as an excuse to pummel their own people. Frankly the West has spent too much time sitting on its hands ignoring the problem but the blood is still there. Ignoring slaughter is the same as sponsoring it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Fuck You Commie!
Not only do we RULE the world we do it with minimum collateral damage.
U...S..A! USA!...USA!
Except for the manufactured International Marxist "street theater"kind.
When we have real unrest a buncha segways ain't gonna stop it,remember Americans,as a free people, are armed and the bulk of US troops will be on OUR side.
Sense on /.
amazing!
War is putting a lot of soldiers on the ground with guns and getting them to kill more of the enemy then the enemy kills of you.
The U.S. and its allies in Vietnam managed to kill more of the enemy, but the U.S. still gave up.
Only when you totally slaughter the enemy will you convince the enemy to stop fighting.
Maybe so, within limits. If you show that you will even kill those that surrender, the enemy has all the more reason for fighting.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, says he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military. Why? Because he needs the damn money...
No, the humans will be serving as spare battery packs to the robots :)
combat robots will get combat promotions on the battlefield, and finally become generals themselves ;)
And that means that the USA army is obviously taking its ideas from cartoon network. I really think they should forbid TV's in the research lab.
I think US Army has no other choice; when most soldiers lack in fire discipline and fire drilling with their personal weapons, only way to gain upper hand lies in using high tech. a kind of shame - gun more bright than his wielder? with development of XM8 as basic rifle for army, we'll finally see, what is better: simple weapon combined with good fire skill (like these new AK74) or sophisticaded weapon combined with little experience. training has its price too... [sorry for my english]
This would probably be a lot funnier if you actually knew how to spell. As it is, it might as well be ROT13ed...
And there go my cliche points for the day.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I don't think the enemy has anything to worry about.
remember on december 18, 2012 skynet will become self aware! be sure to unplug your segway...
Why did everyone get the idea that the Segway was the focus of this project? It seems to me they are trying to develop software and are not to interested in the robotics platform.
Hopefully, LA won't get wind of this!
And tough shit if he doesn't.
The "American hating liberal" propaganda meme was developed years ago to stifle criticism. I think American Power IS CORRUPT. Remember that pwoer corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Truer words were never spoken. And look at how entrenched and longlived the American power structures are! Unlike western european democracies, which were torn down and rebuilt from the ground up in a supervised manner after WW2, the American power structures have grown old and corrupt, made the most powerful and the most corrupt in the world by virtue of happenstance geography. No wonder the average American worker works 30% more hours per year than the western europeans, and has to pay for exorbitant health care and university costs......
eat shiat and bark at the moon
From there it's only a small step to outfit one with a grenade launcher...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about starting instead with Skynet's T-1000? Or even better, something that looks like Christanna Loken?
Visit the best Liberal Blog: DU
What a fantastic world it will be when nobody has any qualms about making weapons or having them used without much thought.
Oh wait.. i think that's the Middle East. Nevermind!!
Hrmph. I always thought Mr. DEKA was tres-intelligent and someone i'd like to work for when i complete my Ph.D., but he can kiss my ass now.. douche bag.
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." - Carl Sagan
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
No, the key problem is money. Tell this to any grunt in the field, and they'll point and laugh at you. The Armed Forces can't even provide body armor that'll stop an AK-47 round to the troops; try telling them they'll have autonomous robotic trashcans and they'll giggle.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I'll bite - no wonder why Europe has much higher unemployment, much lower productivity, and the President of Czech Republic says Europeans are living in a dream world of short hours and long vacations. Corruption? I'll point you to the recent Elf scandal in France.
DaVinci invented lots of technology for the military of his day.He himself was a sniper and killed lots of the enemy.
Whats the PhD in asspicking?
Fuck You and not for any stupid political views you may find fashionable to hold but for your I'm -a-know-it-all-but really -a a-dumb-ass attitude. You'll go far theres alot of stupid fucks like you who appreciate their own kind.
"They will come together not as a master-slave relationship, with the human telling the robot what to do," , said computer science professor Manuela Veloso. "The human and robot will be part of the same task."
This guy apparently has watched Blade Runner too much, and not enough of the Matrix or Terminator. I think the master-slave relationship is the only safe one when it comes to robots. Somehow the idea of robots running around, without a human geeding it instructions, is not very appealing to me. Especially if that robot is a military one with weaponry or something.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
As far as the fantasy of a mechanized weapons platform/robotic soldier. They would never be able to be truly autonomous, except for maybe general recon. Unless of course is some extremely narrow situations such as a designated kill zone, where anything that moves is a target. Off course there is still the danger of the robot leaving that area on its own and going on a rampage. Many anime and manga revolve around that theme. All of the things currently being developed require human observation, direction, and decisions.
Both Europeans and Americans agreed in studies that their main enjoyment in life was free time... and Americans work 5-10 hours more per week than Europeans, and have 50-70% less holiday. It's a dream world, all right!
Reading actile they reference Master/Slave. SO I guess reading this illegel now.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Hmmm. Sigh, I know it was a joke, but wouldn't you think they'd put in a fuel cell into the Segwaynator? It'd last a lot longer than a dozen miles. Or use a mobile generator to juice up the bots.
And how long exactly d'ya think a hummvee goes before it runs out of gas? A tank? Much of army logisitics involves moving giant gasoline tankers around behind all that mechanical infantry.
A fuel-celled powered or a simple diesel-powered mobile generator charging a few hundred Segwaynators would require refueling a lot less than our forces' current gas-em-ups. Electrical motors are more effectient users of fuel, matched mile for mile.
And if you up the amps on the rechargers, you can get a battery on full in less than 15 minutes. Higher amps, even faster. Research the solutions that GM engineers came up with for the Impact car. You don't even have to worry about being killed accidently -- they used induction charging.
I agree completely. This is the point that everyone has been missing: a robot is expendable, and you can afford to take ridiculous risks with it, and still come out ahead. Just like how the Predator UAVs are used in situations which used to be suicide missions for some lucky pilot, like taking pretty pictures of the enemy AAA.
As for the power thing, that could be easily solved by using electrical generators. The robots could probably even run on gasoline engines or whatever (like the ones in the DARPA challenge probably will). We're not talking about your toy robot that runs on AAs, we're talking about the freak'n US Army, which has trucks capable of carrying multiple tanks across the desert. The logistical issues are trivial compared to keeping human beings supplied with food, water, ammunition, etc.
I read an article, where they pointed out the real problem with robotic soldiers: eventually, our enemies are going to be tired of shooting at a bunch of tin cans with their RPGs, and not getting anything out of it. Eventually, terrorism might be the only way to strike back, and when people get truly desperate...
Like the 12mph maximum speed and half-hour maximum battery life is going to be real useful in real-life battlefield conditions? And I can see why they're only considering them for robots -- no self-respecting soldier would be caught dead on one!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Since governments (USA in particular) seem to think its a great idea to spend billions of dollars every year for "defence", I think it would be a far better scenario for the "troops" to be robots instead of people. The needless killing of stupid 20-somethings with nothing better to do is far worse than a bunch of defunct battle-bots in the trenches. I doubt these robotic troops will become very widespread in any recent timeframe, but it's good to see that Armies will eventually be able to use robots instead of people.
As a professor of mine once said, "It's strange to see this happening. I remember when war was about people. People killing people."
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
As I've said before, this is all part of DARPA's Segway RMP project, which is very cool.
http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/programs/mars/rmp.htm
Mr. Spleen
Okay, so first the US builds these robots to fight in war. One month after several magicly disappear, and suddenly every other country has there own army robots. So know we don't fight against people, but instead machines are the new soldiers. That's smart in theory but can you imagine the chaos of AI controling government military. With all the joking aside, when (not if) the US military implements this it'll only be a matter of time before someone hacks their network. Next thing you know robots are traveling through NYC blowing everything up. 9/11 won't even compare.
I will defend my country against these clanking monstrosities the same way I protected earth from the Daleks;
stairs.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage