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US Army Testing Robots with Shotguns
Darren writes "The US Army is testing robots armed with shotguns. The robots are called Packbots and have already seen some action in Iraq. It also has chemical sensors that detect nuclear, biological, and chemical contaminants. Maybe I've seen a few too many bad sci-fi movies, but robots with shotguns scare me."
Haven't we already covered the packbots and their shotgun plug-ins enough? This is pretty old news.
Here are two more older articles with more pictures. These don't mention shotguns...
The arms the shotguns are attached to tend to move pretty slowly, and using them against live combatants would not be the simplist task. I think the author of the article was looking to add a little more sauce than necessary. These things are most likely being used to go into hazardous situations to collect information and handle volatile/dangerous substances/objects.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
No scarier or faultprone than a Predator drone, armed with Hellfires, being flown remotely by a pilot on the ground.
Look at the CIWS on many surface ships; once it's been set loose, it atempts to destroy inbound missiles with a hailstorm of fire.
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
A report published in The Lancet Medical Journal (although the link seems to be down at the moment) authored by researchers from John Hopkins University, Columbia University, and some University in Bagdhad. Even if the numbers are half of that, its pretty disturbing.
These aren't nearly the first robots carrying shotguns. Bomb-disposal robots used by police bomb squads have used shotguns for several years. They're usually used for shooting locks to allow the robot to open doors to get to where the bomb is. I suppose the shotgun could alternately be used to detonate the bomb, though that would be a very expensive use since the robot would likely be destroyed in the blast.
All of these robots are remote-controlled. This is no different in concept from arming a Predator RPV with missiles. You're providing a mechanical extension of a human operator the capacity to do a specific job.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
bullshit that 100,000 number was based off of polling random people in Iraq. It also accounted for natural deaths. Here http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/
If they did, they'd discover that the article is actually an excerpt of a larger article. THAT FA was written by a nutritionist/fitness guy, with a semi-nude picture of himself and his sixpack at the end of the article.
If you try to find HIS source, good luck! There are no links to credible sources on that page.
In other words, nothing to see here. This is not a credible source; it's an anti-war rant.
...not to mention the fact that the last thing you'd install on a pacbot is a pump action shotgun, which would require a little robotic arm to work the pump. If the story were remotely plausible, it would have selected a sensible semi-automatic shotgun, not a pump.
Len.
Saddam would have killed 2X the the number that have been killed this year just for the sake of repression.
Do you have _any_, and I mean _ANY_ evidence to back this claim up? I can provide you with one side of the equation. More than 100k people have died since the begining of the US invasion on Iraq, as a consequence of that invasion. Here's my source: New scientist.
Can you point us where it says that Saddam used to kill some 200-300k annually? Or were you just pulling the '2X' out of your ass, because 'we all know he was a murderous tyrant'?
The Iraqis as a people are much better off this year.
Yeah, right. +1, Insightful.