Robot Rebellion Quelled in Iraq

opencity writes "The Register reports that the (perhaps inevitable) robot rebellion has been avoided ... for now. 'Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.' Gizmodo also has a good photo."

Comments

Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov...

[Eivind]

Much too late. The US has deployed armed flying "hunter-killer" robots for several years.

not the first time a "robot" cannon has gone wild.

[advocate_one]

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14

Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov...

[vux984]

I -strongly- suggest you read Asimov's robot novels, in particular

I, Robot (absolutely NOTHING like the movie)

Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun
Robots of Dawn
Robots and Empire

Asimov is smarter than you give him credit for. :)

$230K per robot

[Mathinker]

The Wikipedia article on these robots (POV warning: it reads like an ad from the manufacturer), says that each one (of the weapon-equipped version, anyway) costs $230K. You'd think that at that price, it'd pay for organized crime from an advanced nation to figure out how to jam the transmission to/from the robot, and make away with a few.

Actually, even a good thick black net might be enough to disable the sensors on this thing. Or maybe use a large electromagnet attached to a pickup truck with a long enough cable?

OTOH, $230K is the cost to the army. It's probably worth less as stolen goods. If I know the Army, it's probably worth a lot less.

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[BigDukeSix]

Not sure which number you consider bogus, but if it's the reference for the >100,000 dead Iraqis, you want, look no further than the New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008 issue, pages 484-493. The article is entitled "Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002-2006".

This is the first war that has had a careful statistical study of civilian deaths. Since the entire world knew this war was going to happen well in advance, the WHO sent researchers to perform what's called cluster analysis- they identified 10,000 households and then visited them repeatedly over the next three years to determine actual mortality. They then extrapolated to the population of the country as a whole.

Result: 151,000 excess violent deaths (95% CI, 104000-233000).

Re:One of the problems.

[NoisySplatter]

I think you're misunderstanding how this particular machine operates. It has nothing to do with software , nor is it capable of operating autonomously. It's all about mechanical components and remote control. There is not even a hint of targeting, motion compensation, or stabilization.

I operated one of these systems on top of my truck in Iraq. It was possibly the biggest waste of effort ever. When we went over even slightly rough terrain it would shake itself apart so badly that i had to tighten its bolts of several times a day. If i could find the appropriate sized allen wrench that is. Even then it would stop moving without any apparent reason. Like it was stuck or something.

The view it offered was vastly inferior to just being in the turret myself. I couldn't see anything that wasn't straight in front of it. Ultimately we gave it back to the armory, told them it was broken and we didn't want it back. In other words, that machine is shit. I'd rather stick halfway out the top of of an armored truck than use it again.