Robots for No Man's Land

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Stryker is an 18-ton infantry vehicle, already deployed by the U.S. army in places such as Iraq. Right now, it has human drivers. But that will no longer be the case by 2010, when it will be driven by a robot. Today, the Stryker has a 'ladar' scanner, which emits 400,000 laser and radar beams and snaps 120 images every second. 'Its brain -- a 40-pound computer system tucked inside its body -- processes that data, and makes instant judgments on how to act and where to go.' These robots are developed by General Dynamics Robotic Systems, Inc. (GDRSI), which received $185 million last November to build between 30 and 60 automated-navigation prototypes to be used in all kinds of military vehicles. This overview contains more details, references and photographs."

Comments

You are perfectly safe

[ENOENT]

There is no danger of these 18 ton robotic war machines going berserk and killing everyone around them. None at all. Really. You should all feel secure in the knowledge that they were programmed by the lowest bidder.

Does war become cheap?

[ajiva]

Lets say the US has a fully automated robotic army. Ignorning the whole "SkyNet" issue, does this mean making war is now a no brainer? Because if American's don't have to die, do we just beat up whoever we want whenever we want? I for one think that this will change the world more than the Atom bomb did.

Re:Does war become cheap?

[Animats]

That's an unusually insightful comment.

There's considerable military interest in small, cheap sensor platforms, from robots to "smart dust". Most of this stuff doesn't work, and much of it founders on the problems of how to power the gadgets. But someday it probably will work.

Quantity has a quality all its own. Even if the stuff isn't all that effective on a per unit basis, it may become possible to overwhelm an enemy with sheer production power. We can't yet release millions of little robots in Afghanistan, all looking for bin Laden. But the first kills by robotic air vehicles have already happened there.

The future of war in cities and jungles may involve huge flocks of robotic birds. Most just watch. Some kill. All report back and work together.

Save the hubble...

[Tarwn]

Ok, so they can build multi-purpose, multi-terrain robots that have to make life or death decisions with automatic weapons, but they can't make a couple to send up on an unmanned probe to fix the hubble? There's something wrong with the math here...

What about radio control?

[Nakito]

Wouldn't it make more sense to use radio control by human operators, rather than autonomous on-board robots? Can the on-board robot really deal with every possible circumstance? Does it have enough "judgment" to improvise? Isn't human control simpler and hence more robust?

Infantry never going away

[Tassach]

Quoth the article:

"Well before the end of the century, there will be no people on the battlefield," said Robert Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Management and Technology.

Dollars to doughnuts says Dr. Bob has never served in the military. Nothing will ever replace a guy with a rifle. Planes, tanks, nuclear weapons, and a whole raft of other innovations were supposed to make the common infantryman obsolete. Guess what, the grunt is still around. Today's infantryman has a lot of tools to make his job easier and make each man more effective, but in the end no matter how fancy your technology it all comes down to a guy with a weapon in his hand standing on a piece of land saying "I'm here to stay". That hasn't changed since the first Australiopithicus picked up a pointy stick, and it probably never will.

Re:Obligatory quote

[LadyMayhem]

as much as this might be just a random quote... it could very well be reality in a coming years. I think eventually will wind up following the path of nuclear weaponry. With no human deaths it would be more an economic case of who could support such a battle; possibility turning war into a rather large costly game of chess. Only once the robotic defenses were broken could anything be achieved.

Then again, what else is new, thats what we've been doing with people for years... who ever can send bigger better forces wins.

You would think eventually people could reason out better ways to deal with conflicts than war... that money could be going to a myriad of other things, but no we're making smart tanks (granted the technology could be useful, i just dont agree with the purpous)

I don't think that this will happen in 2010...

[wbattestilli]

but it will happen and an interesting danger arises with this revolution in military tech.

Currently, governments and militaries are limited by what they can do because they need citizens to power the military machine.

Once you remove the need for large quantities of citizens two problems arise:

1. Robots will have no problems killing ANYBODY that it's controller tells it to. In the US at least, millitary coup is improbable because soldiers == citizens and would probably not attack the general population if ordered to do so. Robots don't have families and ethics.

2. Wars are currently limited by public opition. When our sons and daughters are no longer dying, the public will have much less to worry about when attacking somebody. With robots , we (the US) may have already started fighting with Syria, Libia, Iran...