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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.