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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.'"

3 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.

  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. 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.