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Linux Powers Military UGV
An anonymous reader writes "Linux powers a new autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that learns routes by following along behind foot-soldiers, after which it can retrace the route solo, avoiding obstacles. iRobot's "R-Gator" UGV is based on John Deere's 658cc, diesel-powered M-Gator military utility vehicle platform, with control, navigation, and object-avoidance systems based on BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks. I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?"
If Linux can go to war, it's almost ready for the corporate desktop!
I am certain that there are many Linux idealists that will have no problem with their cute little OS being depoloyed in the machinery of war. Many of them will be more than happy to port new weapons to this platform. I suspect that some of the first batch of weapons will include the rocket launcher, the plasma rifle and the BFG2000.
I'd rather have linux do something like that, even if I don't agree with the 'that'. I'd rather have tax money saved on something like that, and also it furthers the robotics field from the open source point of view.
;)
And best yet, no blue screen of open fire
DYWYPI?
Don't worry, the goov't will be fair and release the source for it guys!
:)
And this new happens on the same day Honda made a self-driven car! Today is just full of coincidences.
Blog via SMS text messaging
/dev/random
Linux kicks ass, so souldn't it kick others asses as well.
"Nothin' runs like a Penguin"
I wonder if the DARPA Grand Challenge competition had anything to do with this? Personally I'd like to see more competitions like that. The success of the X-Prize should tell us how well competition drives creativity and inovation.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
...not a religion. I am one of the those GNU/Linux advocates, and yet I don't see the big deal about Linux powering military equipment. Something's gonna power it, so in my mind it may as well be Linux. It's just an OS, a tool. And I'd trust Linux with a job of that nature, having been involved with Linux-powered ROVs first-hand.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
Oh, that's nothing. They'll totally blow a gasket when they find out what the "D" in DARPA stood for. Perhaps a mass boycott of the internet will result.
In other news, the fighting in Iran stopped for several hours yesterday when American college students hacked into a group of the Army's UGVs and used them to simulate games of Nintendo's RC Pro-Am and Mario Cart. Fortunately, control was restored later in the day, but not before the battlefield had been strewn with bananas, ricocheting tortoise shells and decoy power-ups.
Who says that all the software used on this device is open-source? The only thing that it says is that it's Linux-powered (which means that it runs on the Linux kernel). It's entirely possible, that all the software used on this device, save the Kernel, is closed source in nature. And then, the Gov't wouldn't be bound to release any source changes to the non-kernel software on it.
But, even if they do make changes to the kernel, I suspect they have some way of getting around the license.
From the OSI definition:
"The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."
Its part of Freedom; freedom to do anything with it they want. Think of it like free will. If a God gave it to people, then they were free to do stuff that he didn't like, but thats part of the package deal.
DYWYPI?
Well, inventions get used in different ways. Scientists easily dismiss such notions. As would software developers, I suppose. But since the poster touched upon this topic I would really like to know how the Slashdot crowd feels about this issue. Should scientists be more sensetive about possible missuse of their findings?
One argument would be: If I don't figure it out, someone else will come along later on. So by not discovering dangerous stuff it merely prolongs the danger.
A good example would be genetic research, which bears huge potential as well as risks.
IMHO researchers should not stop researching altogether, but be more sensitive and think about possible missuse beforehand. Also they should be much more vocal about the possible dangers that come with using the knowledge they helped to gain.
I think it's great. We're talkin' about a frickin' cart here, not Giant Robo, and I'd rather have the Army use Linux than give some contractor 2 billion dollars to develop an operating system from scratch.
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
Excuse my French, but SUPER-FUCKING-COOL.
I eagerly await our new, Linux based Robotic F/OSS Overlords!
HAHAHAHAHA
For some reason, this joke feels funnier this time.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
So far, the balance of the comments seem to be in favour, or at least neutral to the idea of implementing Linux within a device that will no doubt end up killing a good few people. In contrast, should Linux ever be used for DRMs, which have, as far as I know, not killed anyone, most people here would be up in arms, if the recent story on GPL and the DRM is to be taken as a guide.
...the last thing I need is fucking Clippy popping up in my rifle sights.
"It looks like you are attempting a center-of-mass shot at 250 meters. Would you like help?
O Get help taking the shot.
O Just take the shot without help.
O Get help relocating your target, who is long-gone by the time you've finished mousing around this lame-assed help interface."
blog |
As for distribution - militaries exchange technology. The British buy from the Americans and vice versa, for example. That will certainly be covered by the GPL, which means first-tier allies of the US are likely to get hold of such code at some point.
It's unclear what this would mean for the - uh - dodgier arms deals. (The contra scandal, the sales to Saddam Hussein, munitions to Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians, etc.) Would the US Government feel obliged to honor the license when it conducts illegal arms deals? Probably not. If the technology proved that vital for them to use, they'd find a way to use Eminent Domain or some such rule to claim exemption or ownership.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
Considering all it does is run a patrol and alert when people are coming INTO a base presumably up to something dastardly - I imagine it would feel pretty good to deploy something like that would help save lives.
Would it help the submitter if the first deployment were to patrol a buidling full of bunny rabbits and baby chicks to keep wolves at bay?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Nintendo emulator won't cluster that well and isn't CPU intensive enough. Now, if you'd said that they'd uploaded copies of bzflag and freeciv server on one, xmame on a second and were doing a distributed compile from scratch of Gentoo or Fedora Core on the rest, it would be believable. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I am pretty sure that Linux is really the only option for something like this for several reasons: /var/enemy/combatants/"
-OS X would simply look too damn sleek and sexy for military use
-Windows
*Blue Screen of Death (not helpful in tactical situations)
*As mentioned before, Clippy would probably be a liability in the field
*Do you really want something like Sasser to cripple the military?
*In a battlefield situation is one Tuesday a month enough?
-The proprietary Diebold voting machine system
*hahahahhahahahahaha
-Arm this thing with some serious firepower and "rm -rf" means something
-Arm this thing and alias pWn="sudo rm -rf
-BeOS just flashes the things headlights
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?"
Isn't that the point? Free as in speech, not as in beer means that sometimes someone might do something with your creation that you don't like or agree with. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
Penguins do.
Any non-defense related sourcecode written by the government can be obtained by any citizen, although you may have to fill out paper work to get it. Alot of agencies just give it away though, NASA being a big supporter of that (I even believe they have some software for shuttle control available for download), but the department of defense also releases a ton of source code (quite a bit of it though you do need to sign a form and fax it, its not bad, I've done it). The NSA releases things like SELinux, but there is a lot more then just what I'm listing. I mean literally tons of stuff. If you're a citizen of the states it might be worth checking out.
Regards,
Steve
http://outcampaign.org/
First off. This ATV/Golf cart thing isn't going to be killing anyone unless it runs them over....probably several times considering it's size. There isn't a single piece of weaponry, automated or otherwise aboard this thing. Though Marines will probably figure out a way to attach a manned M240 to one, but if the shooting starts, it's probably going to be taken off autopilot. At least I would hope.
In any event the "practical" uses of this thing aren't practical at all! I mean, it's cool and all, but there is no way in hell the military is going to let these things roam around Iraq unmanned. They will never leave eyesight.
Consider my deployment in Iraq. My Marine Reserve unit built a 100 mile temporary fuel supply line from Kuwait up into southern central Iraq. Every few miles along this pipeline at "booster" stations a fire team of Marines were stationed to man the pumps. Every day a manned convoy would leave the central logistical support area and resupply the troops along the line with food, water, mail, ammo, etc.
Here's what would happen if the Military let this thing re-supply the troops autonomously.
1.) By the 3rd out of 17 booster stations all the good MRE's would be rat-fucked out of the boxes.
2.) By the 4th booster, all MRE's would be gone and somone would have pissed in the remaining water.
3.) The next day, when the thing hadn't come home and booster stations 6 through 17 called in wondering where their water was, a convoy would find it between booster station 5 & 6 with no engine, no wheels, and no usable sheetmetal left.
4.) The bedouins across the way would have an oxcart with brand new wheels a new engine on their generator and a new green metal patch on the roof of their tent.
So, it's really not unmanned. It's only a toy that Marines are going to be responsible to look after, take care of, and never let out of their sight. I suppose it could be useful to carry things while you are on a patrol, but that's what your pack is for anyway.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
...I think there's a much bigger swords/plowshares issue with the John Deere engine than the OS.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Which I can't resist:
;-)
" I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?""
Linux user not necessarily an idealist, though Debian folks exist
cute little OS - well depending where it is used Linux can be neat and tiny or huge and scary, but cute little it is certainly not, I wonder if article submitter is perhaps BSD user as some of them feel so superior that they need to criticise other OSses but they are so clever that you don't notice it immediately.
It is like Finnish rules of "vittuilu" (irritating, flamebaiting, trolling another person) it is best when it takes the victim week or two before he/she suspects that he/she indeed is victim of "vittuilu" That line is done poorly as it irritates directly.
Better phrase could have been "Yo Linux Fans Now You Are Military Approved Isn't It Nice" or "What do you think of the choice of Linux in military system, real flower power ?" (of course that real flower power part should be linked to that graffiti ad campaign"
Not all inventions are products of warfare or hostility. In general, inventions are a product of need, with greater need yielding greater inventions. War generates need, so all wars will see inventiveness increase, but need does not require war. It is a one-way relationship.
Should the military use GPLed technology? Provided they honor the license and the spirit, yes. I believe they should. In fact, I'd almost prefer it if it were mandatory. Why? Because if you share what you are doing - even with a limited few - and reduce the secrecy, you will also reduce the sort of paranoia that tends to lead to conflict. If you look at the recent war with Iraq and the building tensions with Iran, what is the common factor? Secrecy on all sides, paranoia on all sides, resulting in tension and finally hostilities. Furthermore, it is between highly unequal forces, leading to the notion of an eventual "victory". Near-equal forces, as existed in the "Cold War", are much keener to avoid conflict. GPLing the armed services, therefore, could be one step towards reducing the need for military interventions.
Then there's the "viral" nature of the GPL. Again, this assumes that the GPL is honored in spirit and in letter. The technology will be sold to close allies, who can then alter the sourcecode for their own needs - within that particular system and for other devices. Those other devices will therefore carry GPLed code. Eventually, through enough such steps, the code will reach dual-purpose technology. Probably pretty quickly, too. When that happens, all of the improvements will flood back into the civilian world.
Finally, I believe that there are members of the armed services who value the Open Source community and want to sustain it. The military, more than anyone else, know how to make software secure. In this day and age, with viruses, trojans and worms running rampant, I certainly think that the military could play a major role in reducing or eliminating malware. They know more about trust systems, authentication of information, controlling access without debilitating operations, fault tolerence in hostile environments, high volume information processing without inflicting DDoS attacks on themselves, etc, than anyone else. That knowledge, donated back into the F/OSS community, could revolutionise computing as we know it. I don't think it can hurt to give them the opportunity.
Yes, Einstein regretted the bomb. Arguably, nuclear weapons technology was a bit of a mistake - it wasn't needed to get Japan to surrender and has opened up more cans of worms across the world than I care to imagine. Arguably, though, it was inevitable. There have been natural runaway reactions, so someone would have discovered how to cause one eventually through simple geology. Either that, or through a nuclear reactor accident.
(Knowing more about the nature of critical mass reactions may actually have prevented far worse accidents than have been caused through malice. We'll never know the answer to that one, but it seems a possibility.)
Uncontrolled nuclear explosions, through proposed derivatives of the Orion Project, may yet have a valuable function in space exploration, too, in a way that might not be practical by other means. When people say that something can cut both ways, they usually mean that there's a negative side to something appearing positive. What they forget is that the statement doesn't stop there. It also means that - if you choose to seek it out - there can be a positive side to something that appears negative.
I'm not sa
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I like feeling the pleasure of knowing that Linux runs on thousands of thousands of servers that run PORN. And I have the great pride in knowing now that Linux is kicking ass in the battleground and protecting my rights to download PORN. And keeping some bunny lovin' desert dweller at bay from taking over our rights from downloadin PORN. Amen and god bless
I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?
I feel like Einstein after the two A-bombs on Japan. I feel like Mikhail Kalashnikov seeing his designer gun on TV where it was used to pump up a couple of hundred kids.
Seriously, what's wrong with Linux being used in this project? You a Windows user man?
Be afraid, there is a killer penguin looking for you. Be very afraid.
$ sed 's/Iraq/Iran/g' *.c
$ make install
war.c: In function `analyze_country':
war.c:42: warning: variable `Iran' might possess nuclear weapons
Developers developers developers. Whooo! Whoooooohoo! - EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! YOU WILL BE EXTERRRRRRRMENATED!
Oh God NO! What have we DONE?!
If it weren't for Balmer then Microsoft would be no fun at all.
"I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?"
The same I feel about Linux servers being used for spam: I'd like to slowly disembowl the spammers, but what does the OS (by definition a general-purpose tool) have to do with that?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Maybe some of our Linux idealist understand some things are worse than war. Just ask some of the poor folks in N. Korea, or some of the folks that survived and are witnesses of the holocost. Linux in defense of human dignity and fredom is beautiful thing.
The John Deere platform is only available to military users. It has a really nice, small, advanced Diesel engine so should be very cheap to run. It looks dirt simple to work on. Far from being restricted, they should be giving them away with a grant to anyone working on autonomous vehicles, and to me. Because I want one. No, make that two. In fact, give them away free to anyone who has ever worked in vehicle research, because you will then see the state of the art in autonomy advance by leaps and bounds. Why? Because there is currently no suitable cheap, widely available platform. The Darpa challenge was won by a modified VW van, with a huge array of platforms behind it. Standardising around a simple, low cost, low power vehicle which is already tough would put future teams on a level playing field, ensuring that it was the superior systems that won the day, and that no-one could profit from their ability to buy mechanical muscle.
Pining for the fjords
The day may come where you sit down of a Satuday afternoon, turn on the television only to see in bold writing: ROBOT WARS: The Linux based killing machine "Torvaldarus" vs the unpredictable Windows based "Gatesarus", to the death.
This is exactly the reason that the idea of a unmanned/robot army is such a horrible thing. It dehumanizes the conflict and makes war less and less of a "worse" choice.
Look, last I checked, we don't need robots to dehumanize war.
It doesn't take Strong AI to get the Nationalistic or dogmatic fervor up in which thousands or millions of your own people are screaming at the top of the lungs "Death to the infidels!", "For the motherland/fatherland!" (depending which side you are on), or "Let's napalm those sons of bitches... for FREEDOM!"
I could sit hear all day and list countless examples of how normal people turn into rabid killing machines for the nation or belief and how war doesn't need technology to dehumanize attrocities.
What technology does do is make war more impersonal and amplifies what a small group of people can do to another group. As in... I don't have to get in your face and stab you with sword, but I can shoot a rapid fire machine gun at 300m and kill more men in a second than in a day with a sword. There will probaly always be war as long as man is around. Maybe there will be bits and times of peace, but eventually I'd dar say once man is in the stars and colonized other systems we will see wars out there too.
Robots might even be better than humans. Most war attrocities have occurred when the soldiers on the ground freak out because of war stress or maybe because of retaliation and round up villagers/pows and force them to dig their own graves and then shoot them. The digging the graves is often optional.(see the My Lai Massacre
Heck... Those guys might not even be that stressed out but they might be just pissed off for stories they heard on the war (see Balkan Wars)
Robots won't disobey war cimes orders nor will they have a concious thinking to themselves "gee maybe this is wrong", but as the record stands now, most humans don't seem to have a problem with commiting war crimes either given the right circumstances.
Ethical war condunct is the responbility of the government and those controlling the weapons. If you tell your robots to murder civilians, you are just as guilty as the person who told his human soldiers to murder civilians.
The benefit of robots, is and always will be the saving of lives of "our" fighting men and women. The US military will proceed with this whether we like it or not and the public will support it because it is their sons and daughters that are dying.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The rugged PDA in the photo is a Recon device from Tripod Data (www.tdsway.com). I work there, and occasionally work on that product. Anyhow the picture in the article of the device is actually running PocketPC2003, not Linux. I guess that they are just using the Recon as a user interface & have a more powerful Linux computer stashed somewhere else. Linux has been ported to the Recon though.
Damnit - I wanted my nick to be "WouldIPutMYRealNameOnSlashdot"