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Machine Gun Sentry Robot Unveiled
mpthompson writes "Samsung has partnered with a Korean university to develop a robotic sentry equipped with a 5.5mm machine gun. Meant for deployment along the DMZ between North and South Korea, the $200,000 robot employs sophisticated pattern recognition software for targeting humans. No three laws here, but the robot does include a speaker that can be used to politely issue a warning before taking the target out. The promotional video is both scary and funny at the same time."
real-life aimbot
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I guess after a half-century mediation by America and China, the Korean Peninsula conflict has degenerated into the Crazy Olympics.
--
make install -not war
We need some improvements in pattern recognition before this is a feasible idea. There is a lot of cognitive processing that goes into seemingly simple decisions like 'Is this a person?' and 'Is this person an enemy?' and 'Is this person armed?'
It does not appear to have the capacity to tell the difference between an unarmed intruder and a heavily armed one, so defeating it is not hard: Approach it with some kind of heavier firepower, and while it talks, you blow it away.
And 200K? For 200 I could do the same thing: a home-depot motion sensor, a voice chip with loudspeaker, and a handful of fertilizer/oil land mines.
Am tired of the same old joke.
This thing would pwn jehova's witnesses!
it doesn't like to hunt for it's own bacon.
I could very much see something like this being very useful in the US if the armament was different. I'm picturing something armed with essentially a paintball gun loaded with balls of marker dye... Might be very useful for places like prisons, etc. It might even be useful as a part of a bank security system. Have it mark them with paint as they leave..
Of course, the liability of it hitting someone in the eye would be a killer, but it is at least interesting to think about what could be done with such a system if armed with non-lethal weaponry.
-Matt
"Ah-ah, I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking, 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' And to tell you the truth, I've deleted that information in all the excitement. But being as this is a 5.5 caliber machine gun, a reasonably priced weapon for developing nations, and has nigh infinite ammo, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, PUNK?"
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I'm sold! Imagine how much better we will all be able to sleep once these bad boys are deployed along the Canadian border!
You can't just up and *ban* the U.S. Marines!
After being thwarted yet a third time in the past, Skynet outsourced time line assassinations to Samsung and the rest they say is history.
When people escaped the DDR (East Germany), specifically over the Berlin Wall - the West Germans helped them in any way possible with open arms, short of provoking war.
Now we shoot them?
Or, NUMBER FIVE IS ALIVE!!
And 200K? For 200 I could do the same thing: a home-depot motion sensor, a voice chip with loudspeaker, and a handful of fertilizer/oil land mines.
Yeah, but when yours gets hit by lightning will Ally Sheedy be able to dance with it? I think not.
It's a machine gun for the Korean demilitarised zone.
There's nobody in there that isn't an enemy, and there's nobody in there that isn't armed (or at least, it doesn't matter if they are or not).
And if it accidentally shoots the odd deer, then nobody cares.
Further, the whole point of talking is to prevent accidents with North Korean troops seen by accident out fishing or something.
You can bet your ass at the first sign of real trouble, they'll all be set to "kill on sight".
Take another look at the context of where this thing will be actually used, then try commenting again.
As others have pointed out, this concept has a tremendous number of issues that would have to be overcome for it to be worthwhile. First off, these units would be incredibly vulnerable to long-distance fire from heavy-caliber anti-material rifles. It's practically the most ideal target imaginable for a .50 BMG shooter: large, immobile, limited lethal range, and no human suffering upon destruction.
Anyone else notice that those prototypes look to have M249 SAWs in them? You can see the tail end of a belt feeding in during part of the video, and it's the most likely possibility for a small 5.56 belt-fed. Except there doesn't seem to be any provisions for decent ammo storage. That tiny box that the weapon sits in isn't nearly large enough to hold more than a hundred rounds or so at most, and it doesn't really look like the weapon is designed to be fed from the base (ammo exposed to the elements; feeding issues; turret rotation and elevation interfering with feeding).
Overall, it looks pretty well useless.
they use the theme song from Pirates of the Caribbean as the soundtrack to their promotional vid...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
It looks like you are entering my firing range. Would you like help with this feature?
What about:
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats
- massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator
- probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above
- fact that military-industrial complex can waste money on shit like this when there are people starving on the same planet
I see these as slightly more problematic than whether it has enough frigging ammo.
Read Pynchon.
And you have? Come on, this is Slashdot. Righty doesn't count.
(sorry, I was going to mod you up, but the opportunity was just too good)
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
You make atheists such as myself and other unbelievers look bad. But you'll grow up some day. People are not stupid for believing in one or many gods. There is no way to prove conclusively that a deity or deities exist or do not. I believe they do not; others may differ, and we cannot prove who is right. Soon enough we will know. So why fight about it? Why argue and bitch and whine? Those who attack a person's faith (or lack thereof) with such vitriol are merely insecure in their own beliefs.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Could you imagine if Microsoft made this robot?
Robo-sentry.NET Vista Live: It looks like you're trying to enter a demilitarized zone! Would you like to:
Either that, or they'd try and sell trespassers V1AGRA
Seriously, if you want to learn anything when it comes to threads like these, tune your preferences to demote posts marked "funny". You'll be amazed.
I think there should be an international treaty banning all lethal weapons without a brain attached to the trigger.
In what way must the brain be attached? Would duct tape work? How about staples?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This makes me wonder how long it'll be until this sort of tech gets miniaturized enough to fit on a portable gun, so we end up with people toting Aliens-style M56 Smart Guns. You could imagine it being coupled with some sort of friendly-fire deterrence system like they use with aircraft.
Realistically the land mine treaty is a waste of time. Mines will not be abolished from the battlefield for the forseeable future because they are an extremely effective weapon. Here you have a simple device that can be deployed by minimally skilled troops, it is cheap to manufacture, hard to detect and neutralize and can be deployed from aircraft with great speed for rapid denial-of-terrain as the US military likes to call it. Of all the things that tank commanders fear, they fear mines the most. You can see or detect another tank or a helicopter before it strikes, you can even stand a chance to evade, detect or even destroy and LGB or a missile with a counter measures system but a mine the tank commander can't see or detect rapidly in combat. The same pretty much goes for the infantry, they fear few things as much as mines and snipers. Here is an object that costs what? $50 to manufacture that has the power to scare the shit out of the crew of an M1 Abrams tank that costs $4.3 millon to make and better yet it stands a very good chance of destroying it. You can't beat that combination in terms of value-for-money. Trying to ban mines, land or naval, will go the same way that the various attempts back in the 1930s to outlaw the areal bombing of civillians. It is deplorable, but unfortunately also true.
These people are not part of an invading army. They are not trying to kill us. They are not here to destroy our way of life. They are starving people who want to cross over to mow our lawns and take care of our children. I'm not saying that we should just let them waltz in or anything, but for crying out loud, where's your sense of compassion? You don't need guns to stop the flood of illegal immigrants, you need to put pressure on the Mexican gov to get its act together and start acting more responsible towards its people -- especially those in the lower classes. I have a couple of friends who are upper-middle class Mexicans, they speak of the lower classes with such disdain that it's no wonder they have no problem exploiting and then exporting a large part of their population to the United States. This is the real issue and we need to *shame* upper class Mexicans for what their doing to their own people. But nobody will ever talk about this -- instead we talk about stupid things like building fences. Why? Well, because rather that tackling actual problems, it's a lot easier to scare people with invasion on the right or massive deportation on the left, or to push racist buttons (on both sides). These are the sort of things that get votes.
So Euler was an idiot? Pascal an idiot? Newton an idiot? Wow, you must have contributed so much to the field of scientific endeavor, because you are certainly riding one mighty high horse there. Maybe you should actually calm down and see that not everyone views the world in the same way you do, and that has no bearing on their intelligence. Or maybe just grow up and realize that you are not in fact the smartest person in the world and if you are going to claim that others are idiots, you might want to check who that group includes first.
Funny that you mention wikipedia, have you ever looked at the articles on various religions in there(hint, they are there). Ever notice how some very well educated believers contribute material to the articles on their respective religions? Are you claiming you are in fact smarter than all those people?
Every world religion count(s/ed) among its adherents some of the smartest people ever to walk this earth, there are some insanely smart people who believe in no religion at all. My point? Believing in a religion has no bearing on your intelligence, and you are an arrogant fool to say otherwise.
Monstar L
What if it doesn't want to be switched off?