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Soldiers Bond with Bomb-Defusing Robots
hdtv writes "Reuters is running a story that talks about the emotional bonds that US soldiers develop with the robots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The company, most famous on the US market for its Roomba vacuum cleaner, provided '300 PackBot Tactical Mobile Robots deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to open doors in urban combat, lay fiber-optic cable, defuse bombs and perform other hazardous duties previously done by humans alone.'"
I don't suppose it's that hard to bond with something that saves your life on an ongoing basis. Perhaps someone should write a paper on it?
We humans are such bonding creatures aren't we? I actually realized this just last evening when I was playing the sims 2.
I had never played a sims game before, but all the excitement and buzz around spore made me decide to try out some of will wrights designs - so I picked up the highly reviewed sims 2.
I created a family and was amazed at how quickly I became attached to them. I feel so compelled to make sure that they are well fed and happy - and I have become extrememly preoccupied with making certain they all have positive relationships with each other.
Then I suddenly realized that these sims are programmed to age and eventually die! I then started another family which I care much less about and refuse to load my original family because I can't bear the thought not only of their permanent passing - but of the distress it will cause the other sims!
Someday I will take them out of this suspended "animation" when I discover how to make them live indefinitely - either through game methods or life-saving game modding!
This technology is long over-due.
No kidding. There are tons of areas where modern technology can help but is held back because it is considered a sign of weakness or something if you don't do it the hard way with people's lives on the line. A rite of passage or somesuch. The big-shots in charge are old and are afraid of technology. It's along the same lines as factory workers fearing they will be replaced by machines.
If you ever did military, you'd know that you're always teached that "your rifle/gun/whatever shoots and can save your life" is your best friend. "Treat it with respect, clean it, oil it & keep it runnin smooth so when you need it, it works." as the teaching goes. Now, if they teach that for your gun that doesn't move or obeys you with a remote and still, people do get connected to it, imagine with a little robot. Think of it like a Tamagochi and you'll see that it's the same principle. With a robot that saves lives, the bonds can get even stonger.
I work with Packbots, doing technology integration. When people play with these 100 pound little monsters, they're user-friendly enough where techies can chase others around in the computer lab. And it hurts when they run into my ankle... a lot. To be fair, it is neat seeing the video zoom by as you control them with a pair of joysticks.
To be fair, the modern M-16 doesn't suffer from these woes. But the only reason it works as advertised is because enough people bitched that the beaurocrats and contractors had to back down and deliver the gun as originally designed.
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One of the lessons learned, and there are several in the nascent robotics market/industry:
- People will anthropomorphize mobile robitic devices (iRobot does the roomba and the pakbot) see their website. People will accept what LALAwood has nearly always portrayed as bad or evil, as a tool and useful.
- Even relatively small robotic systems can be very useful to military and police forces.
- You don't need a EE degree to operate a complex robotics system.
- That for about the cost of an assault rifle, you can save lives.
On top of those lessons, current technology would allow the US to create robotic weapons systems. Say when a patrol gets ambushed, they engage the firing system that puts 120 bullets in the area (any area) from which the system detected gunfire. Police in LA and Miami (IIRC) use sound systems on light poles to detect gunfire. Then while the soldiers are behind protective shielding, the 'robot' is pummeling any would-be attackers.
Trusting robotic systems, especially semi-autonomous or autonomous systems is thought to be difficult, but this proves that people will accept and use them to their full potential. I'm sure that iRobot is finding new ways to improve their robots every week with soldiers using them in a war.
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I was in OIF I and OIF III. I can tell you while I didn't have a robot at any point you do develop these odd co-dependant relationships with certain items, more-so with the clunky ones for certain reasons. In OIF I it was our truck, named "Jihad Joe".
The thing about Jihad Joe is it was a piece of crap, but it was our piece of crap retarded truck. We had to constantly work on it, we modified the hell out of it due to lack of parts and our special needs - spider webbing harnesses for storage, ghetto-rigged the cooling system, wired a DC converter to the battery and hooked a laptop into the SINGARS radio so we could do low-baudrate but secure data burst transmissions off of it (via hyper terminal, yes, very ghetto). The truck was constantly on the verge of death, got some bullet holes, took shrapnel, had a van friggin smash into the side of it, and it got a black eye (headlight busted out).
However the truck saved us many times, and always responded well to our on the fly fixes we had to do while we were out in the city. We limped it back home on many occasions, and we lived out of the vehicle sleeping on it or in it for about 4 straight months and off and on during other periods.
We became very attached to this, partially because we had to work on it so often and in so many ways. We had a co-dependant relationship, and we felt both sides recognized this. We wouldn't abandon it or scrap it, and in turn it would not leave us totally screwed, like some of the better vehicles that when they broke there was no getting them started again. Our truck was a member of our team.
So, parallel that with these robots, the things are high maintenance, and anyone who has had to PMCS anything in the military can tell you that. these guys sweat keeping it running, and it in turn serves a specific function which helps keep them safe. They become unit mascots, a member of the team, much more than a piece of equipment. You are around these things all the time for a long period, you screw around with it in the barracks and get it to fetch your lighter for you or pour water on your sleeping roommate. It becomes one of the guys and develops a personality.
In summary, just from personal experience, this is not surprising.
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I guess i am not the only one here that feels a certain 'bond' to my primary PCs, and i really try to give them somthing useful (routing, fileserving, whatever) to do after i can't use them as my primary workstations anymore. Nonsense, if you think about it, but i still do it.
What i found most interesting about this 'bonding' was to figure out exactly what i was bonding to: if i replace a video-card, some RAM or even the CPU, i still 'feel' as if it's the same machine, even though it obviously isn't. I guess i could change any component, one after the other, and still feel that bond. Thus,, this bonding mechanism (for me, at least), works on a more conceptual level.
Isn't this the same way we bond to other living beings? Like a long-lost friend that might be about 99% different than the last time we saw him, yet still consider him our friend?
And yes, we did name them.... The big one was Johnny 5, the little one was Johnny 2 1/2.
As it has been with many (most/all?) complex designs. The first few iterations are messed up. Design, build, test. Repeat until you get it right.
Name a piece of military hardware, or anything really, that worked perfectly, out of the box, on time and under budget.
Especially when you go way out of the box and build something completely different. F-111, V-22 Osprey, Harrier, Bradley, Patriot, just to name a few.