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

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.

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.