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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.'"
Oh, why didn't you take me instead, oh why!?!?!?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
one must ask that if the bond goes the other way could you end up with manicly depressed robots? :)
As a Disabled American Veteran and member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, let me say Thank You! This technology is long over-due.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Film at 11.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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?
Venkman: You're not sleeping with it, are you?
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!
perform other hazardous duties previously done by humans alone
...that's pretty much true of my Roomba. Wait till I figure out how to make it do the dishes.
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
but you can't love your battle bot.
Soliders name their rifles, Pilots paint nose art on the planes. Roman legions probably named their swords. You develop an attachment to the things that you rely on and that serve you well. You can't trust that your buddy won't get killed tomorrow, but you can trust the fact that your M-16 will work as advertised.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
How about a film where the soldier abandons his robot in the desert, because the robot keeps calling him "daddy" and it's creepy. And then the robot sets off on a quest to understand itself, and meets up with a sex doll and goes looking for the "Green Hummer"? The film ends with Harrison Ford telling the robot it has no end date, and they drive into the mountains together. Captain Adama lands in a spaceship, leaves a little oragami unicorn on a ledge, and then the hot Cylon chick shows up and takes off her shirt.
Just came to me. I better write the outline before I forget.
Soldier: "What's a nice robot like you doing in a place like this?"
Robot: "I'm looking to set something off? How about you?"
Soldier: "Well I'm certainly armed now"
Robot: "You're not one of those 3 minute timer types are you?"
Soldier: "No mam, er...you ever watch BSG?"
Robot: "No"
Soldier: "Good, mind if I call you #6?"
Robot: "Anything is fine but 'Rosie'"
Soldier: "Great, care to get out of here *Rosie* ?"
Robot grabbing soldier's PED (Personal "Explosive" Device): "Time to cut the wire funny boy"
Soldier: "No...a 3G Terminator unit.....NO!!!!!"
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
No disassemble!
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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