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Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the someone-call-for-an-exterminator dept.

NightFalcon90909 writes "You may have heard that armed robots were yanked from Iraq after a gun started to swivel without it being told to do so. 'A recent news report that armed robots had been pulled out of Iraq is mistaken, according to the company that makes the robot [Foster-Miller] and the Army program manager. 'The whole thing is an urban legend,' says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command.'"

6 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. It's Inevitable by Al+Mutasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Three false moves prior to certification is not a problem. Compare this to false moves by soldiers carrying rifles, which are universal. Even if a robot were to point its gun in the wrong direction, the person controlling it, and there always is one, would not pull the trigger. The Army will (and should) let the Talon see action. Gun-shooting robots are inevitable.

    1. Re:It's Inevitable by SwordsmanLuke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I apologize, it was not my intention to cast aspersions on the abilities or competency of the engineers who have worked on SWORDs. My comment was intended to communicate my experiences with the TALON and express my concern over attaching a weapon to any robotic platform.

      I work in the industry and have yet to see any robot which never moves when it's not supposed to. Robotic control is a non-trivial problem and though I don't doubt the abilities of the engineers at Foster-Miller, I have not yet seen any robotic platform I would trust implicitly with a lethal weapon.

      --
      Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
  2. EX-TER-MI-NATE! by Aquaseafoam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE! *Cough* Hrm hrm... If a crossed wire can cause the gun to swivel, then a crossed wire can also cause the gun to fire. Anyone else surprised to see that they failed to include multiple redundancies? Of course, one could put forward the argument that the more redundancies there are, the more there is to go wrong.

    --
    09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
  3. Re:The Government Said So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    The Geneva Conventions don't mention "illegal combatants" or unlawful combatants for that matter. As far as shooting everyone in sight, that's just silly. Many of the people detained in Afghanistan were simply accused by neighbors of being terrorists, but I guess since it's war and we were attacked you feel we should just kill them all.

  4. Never Say Never by bostongraf · · Score: 5, Interesting
    To all those saying that a human is "required" for the trigger, and it could "never" shoot on its own, I would like to remind you of this past October in South Africa:

    "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."
    This was reported here: Wired Danger Room The most unreal quote from that link is (IMO) this:

    But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position. By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.
    The robot was set to reload automatically, as well, and the only reason it stopped firing is because they hadn't provided it with more cartridges.
  5. I'd be more concerned if it never failed by s.carr1024 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'd be a lot more concerned if it never failed because that would mean they don't know the true extent of its capabilities. From TFA, All three umcommanded movements occurred before it was safety certified. Meaning before it was a finished product. As always, the facts tell the story:

    There were three cases of uncommanded movements, but all three were prior to the 2006 safety certification, she says. "One case involved a loose wire. So, now there is now redundant wiring on every circuit. One involved a solder, a connection that broke. everything now is double-soldered." The third case was a test were the robot was put on a 45 degree hill and left to run for two and a half hours. "When the motor started to overheat, the robot shut the motor off, that caused the robot to slide back down the incline," she says. "Those are the three uncommanded movements."


    I am not exactly sure what it means to "double solder" something. But obviously double soldering and redundant wiring add design and material costs. They must have guessed they didn't need the redundancy but, diligently they ran the test and it failed. So, now the robot has redundancy. This is how product validation works. If your products never fails during validation you're probably over-engineering them (meaning a simpler/cheaper product probably could be made that meets the requirements). However, when your products fail it is your job to fix the design and rerun the test. This is apparently what happened. I don't see how any of this is news.