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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 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!
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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!"
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No, the humans would be following the robots, carrying spare battery packs and very long cables.
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...what's the point of smart robots?
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!
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
I totally agree... these things are too slow. You can get away from them if you have a normal bike.
:)
I'm sure the internal name for this project is Skynet. Lucky Arnie's a governour now, maybe he can stop the blast this time
Too hard to click the "Post Anonymously" option when you flame your own posts? Bloody amateurs.
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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?
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
these things are too slow. You can get away from them if you have a normal bike.
Not if they have machine guns on them, you can't.
like this??
But how on earth will he heard his sheep without an assault rifle?