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The Inside Story of the Armed Robot Pullout Rumor

Posted by Zonk on from the see-how-these-things-get-started dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that the initial rumor of the SWORDS robots being pulled out of Iraq — and its subsequent correction — were just that: sensationalizing in the blogosphere. Popular Mechanics has a lengthy update to its original scoop, digging into the sketchy responses from defense contractors when pressed about the bot's actual duties in battle. From the article: 'Although others have used our story to generate a false online rumor about these armed UGVs, the nature of those "technical issues" that Gotvald mentioned in his statement, and that Qinetiq and Foster-Miller have yet to address directly, remains a mystery. Until someone can explain why SWORDS lost its funding, and what exactly it is — and isn't — being used for in Iraq, the rumors are likely to continue. If this is the dawn of the era of robotic infantry, things are off to a decidedly rocky start.""

27 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. First Steps by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whatever steps this robot is taking are baby steps.

    It's too easy to run about in circles with hands in the air, exclaiming 'Fail! Fail!' But this is the infancy. Regarding the maturity of robotic infantry, I have no doubt in my mind the worst fears will fall short of how some dispicable leaders will deplouy such devices.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. Obligatory conspiracy theory by Ethan+Allison · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe the story is just a way for Qinetiq and Foster-Miller to get more attention and attract more investors to a previously less-known-about company?

    --
    I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
  3. Armed Robot Pullout by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh my, the title of this story leaves itself very, very open.

    Did it pull out in time? When can we expect the baby robots, do we finally have self replicating machines? Etc.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  4. Are you a software engineer? by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 2, Funny
    "It's OK for the first bridge to fall down, we can always fix it with a service pack" or "well Beta bridges always fall down": that's not something you hear a civil engineer say.

    Same with a machine waving around a deadly weapon.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  5. Of course by Dunbal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is not the first time the American robotic army has attacked its own troops...

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. They have robots firing from the air by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I've read several reports of those pilotless drones firing from the air. I expect they're under remote control though.

    There's something that really bothers me about this robotic warfare business - it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk. My concern is that if the US were able to wage war with no risk of life at all, it might become quite a bit more despotic to other countries.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
    1. Re:They have robots firing from the air by deft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As opposed to how the actual despots in the regions of the world experiencing ethnic cleansing and warlords would act?

      The US uses smart bombs designed to NOT kill innocent people, to save the civillian lives. it avoids churches (who am i kidding, mosques), etc. back in the day Hannibal would just start in the north and kill or enslave everyone till he hit the water in the south. Much closer but still back int he day, it was carpet bombing back to the stone age, sorry if we hit the daycare.

      No other country has gone to such legth to try and only combat the enemy. unfortunately, the enemy knows that and blends in, uses civilians as sheilds, and pretends to be them, hides in mosques, etc.

      Do you really think that swords is going to be fullt autonomous, like there isnt going to be a pilot to make sure. Of course there will be remote control to overide. While things like picking up a body or tracking may be automated, firing will have some sort of control, as do predators. Flight from gps point to gps point is automated, but theres a guy targetting and ultimately making the kill call.

      In the end, I dont think we can call these "robots" in the sci-fi typical sense... they are a hybrid between remote control vehicle/aircraft and robot.

      --

      There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    2. Re:They have robots firing from the air by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's something that really bothers me about this robotic warfare business - it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk.

      The last thing a nation and its combat troops want is a fair fight and equitable risks. They want weapons that reach farther than the enemy's, armor that can stop the enemy's, and they would prefer to sneak up on the enemy and employ weapons before the enemy is aware of their presence. Combat is not a sport, there is and should be nothing fair about it.

    3. Re:They have robots firing from the air by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk.

            Whoa there! What, would you expect everyone to wear boxing gloves and fight it out by weight class according to the Marquess of Queensbury rules or what?

            War is not about "fairness", it's not about dying for your country - it's about, as George Patton said - making the other poor bastard die for his. It's about surprise. It's about hitting your enemy with all your force in his weakest spot. It's about kicking him in the balls and then shooting him dead when he's on the ground. Because believe me if you let him get up again he's going to try his best to kill YOU.

            Although I personally don't agree with THIS particular war (Iraq), the less you expose your flesh and blood troops to enemy fire, the better. The only catch is the cost. Robot armies are more expensive to build, maintain and replace than some grunt with a rifle. Especially when you're getting charged millions of dollars in shipping to ship a couple washers to the war zone (yes I'm being sarcastic, but if it happened before it will happen again - fraudsters are creative bastards).

            Therefore perhaps it's possible to economically defeat your robot-deploying aggressor if you can make him lose enough robots - but you will pay a price in blood and morale. And after all maybe that's the key - knowing that you're going up against a machine and are probably going to die, and the enemy is controlling the machine from another continent.

            But then again morale has always been a tricky thing to judge. People used to think bombing cities would erode morale - but the effect is quite the opposite. Proven in World War 2, Vietnam, Korea and Iraq 1 with the "scuds". Bombing civilians only makes them angry, not "demoralized".

            Who knows how this will work out.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    4. Re:They have robots firing from the air by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Interesting

      back in the day Hannibal would just start in the north and kill or enslave everyone till he hit the water in the south

      FWIW that was Roman propaganda. Hannibal was pretty good at forming alliances with tribes/cities that were not the most enthusiastic of Roman supporters. The preceding should not be interpreted to suggest that Hannibal was an easy going guy, for example he had an "interesting" way of using Roman prisoners to motivate his troops. He once took two prisoners (soldiers) and forced them to fight to the death. After the fight the winner was brutally and publicly tortured to death. The lesson to his own troops, it is better to die in battle than to be at the mercy of your enemy.

    5. Re:They have robots firing from the air by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Informative

      The US uses smart bombs designed to NOT kill innocent people, to save the civillian lives. it avoids churches (who am i kidding, mosques), etc. back in the day Hannibal would just start in the north and kill or enslave everyone till he hit the water in the south. Much closer but still back int he day, it was carpet bombing back to the stone age, sorry if we hit the daycare.

      Smart bombs are a tiny, tiny fraction of ordinance dropped -- they just kept replaying the footage of the laser guided bomb dropping down a chimney to make you think all war we wage is nice and tidy like that. The vast majority are traditional bombs not all that much more accurate than the ones dropped in WWII -- which means, like in WWII, you need to drop a lot of them to make sure you hit anything, and they surely are going to cause "collateral damage". We've hit plenty of daycares in both Gulf Wars, and most of the time there isn't so much as a "sorry". Between that, and the "we don't do body counts" (meaning we don't measure our collateral damage), I have a hard time believing that the U.S. military really cares that much about saving innocents.

      Of course I'm not saying the U.S. is like the Mongol hordes or anything, raping and pillaging wantonly. Then again in the global political environment, and the realities of Iraq, we really couldn't be either. We're not trying to literally conquer Iraq by beating the whole country into submission, so if we started acting like it, well, two things would happen: 1) the insurgency in Iraq would explode to levels orders of magnitude beyond what we've seen and 2) our few remaining allies would bail on us, and we would probably start to figure out in short order why our trade deficit is a bad thing.

      We're doing our best, and we're a lot better than plenty of countries you could name, but lets not pretend that we're actually doing all that well. It's only by admitting our failings that we can keep getting better; if we just assume we're the best and that's that, we will surely backslide (and I think this has very much happened).

      Do you really think that swords is going to be fullt autonomous, like there isnt going to be a pilot to make sure. Of course there will be remote control to overide.

      Yeah I was very suspicious when I heard the story, because everything I'd heard was that the military was 100% committed to always having a human decision maker in the firing loop for these robots. And I think anyone who has watched Terminator, War Games, Matrix, or Short Circuit for that matter would agree that is a wise decision.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    6. Re:They have robots firing from the air by Original+Replica · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "it doesn't seem fair to fight a war that doesn't put your troops at risk."

      Only a fool wants war to be "fair". There are two basic reasons for this:
      1. To be fighting a war necessitates that you hold the lives of your countrymen and the ways of your country as superior to those of the country you are fighting. It is impossible to "value everyone equally" and be fighting a war, because there is no reason to preserve your culture or life in preference to that of the enemy. In that light it is impossible to reduce the vulnerabilities of your own soldiers too much.
      2. The more equally balanced the sides of a war the longer it will last and the higher the death toll will be before a true victor can emerge. A "fair" war would have the highest possible causalities and damage to both sides, an overwhelming force and decisive victory has the fewest causalities and the least collateral damage.

      --
      We are all just people.
    7. Re:They have robots firing from the air by lennier · · Score: 4, Insightful

      " But then again morale has always been a tricky thing to judge. People used to think bombing cities would erode morale - but the effect is quite the opposite. Proven in World War 2, Vietnam, Korea and Iraq 1 with the "scuds". Bombing civilians only makes them angry, not "demoralized"."

      One of the problems I have with widespread deployment of ground combat robots is that it truly and literally 'depersonalises' the force using those robots in the eyes of not only the adversary, but of civilians witnessing the combat.

      When you're dealing with urban warfare / counterinsurgency situations, it seems like the *last* thing you want is for uncommitted bystanders to start seeing you as a bunch of soulless machine-operators killing their flesh-and-blood friends and relatives. At a stroke, you've then lost even the tenuous moral credibility you get from having actual people shooting and dying in the combat zone.

      Of course, you're most of the way there already by being suited up like Darth Vader and calling in airstrikes, so this battle should have been fought decades back - but increasing reliance on robots will not help win hearts and minds.

      When you're just trying to kill a bunch of people, okay, sure, robots ftw. But if you're trying to make them think you're human... not so much.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    8. Re:They have robots firing from the air by Perf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Geneva Conventions say that if army 1 uses civilians, hospitals, schools, etc. as a shield and fires on Army 2. Army 2 can fire back in self defense and any civilian casualties are the responsibility of Army 1.

      During the Korean War, the North Korean soldiers would often hide in a group of refugees and open fire at a U.N. checkpoint. When the U.N. soldiers fired back in self defense, the propaganda corp would have a field day.

      BTW, what is Osama binLaden's serial number? And what is the regulation uniform for his soldiers? think it's not important? Check the Geneva Conventions regarding such matters. (Hint - without these, the combatants are not considered soldiers and can be shot as spies.)

    9. Re:They have robots firing from the air by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Smart bombs are a tiny, tiny fraction of ordinance dropped -- they just kept replaying the footage of the laser guided bomb dropping down a chimney to make you think all war we wage is nice and tidy like that. The vast majority are traditional bombs Sorry, your information is out of date.

      Concurrent to the invasion of Iraq the US Air Force started fitting JDAMs to its extant stockpile of munitions -- a small mass-produced pod attached to an extant weapon that turns a dumb bomb into a smart bomb.

      Last number I heard, the dumb/smart bomb ratio was at 50/50 and rising.

      I have a hard time believing that the U.S. military really cares that much about saving innocents. They don't so much care about saving innocents, as they care about not making life difficult for themselves. And, in most places they operate, that means not hitting a church or blowing up an innocent without either advance warning or a clear intention on doing so.
    10. Re:They have robots firing from the air by bagsc · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Smart bombs are a tiny, tiny fraction of ordinance dropped -- they just kept replaying the footage of the laser guided bomb dropping down a chimney to make you think all war we wage is nice and tidy like that."

      1991 called - they want their facts back.

      2002: 60% of munitions in Afghanistan were "smart"
      -DOD
      2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom - "Smart bombs like the JDAM have comprised 80 percent of the munitions used during this operation." USAF

      --
      http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
  7. Software already "waving around" weapons by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Software is already waving around, or more accurately flying around, weapons. Today, many a pilot does not directly manipulate control surfaces to maneuver or activate a solenoid (or whatever, you get the idea) to drop a bomb. The pilot enters inputs into a computer requesting particular actions and the computer decides if and how to implement those requests, i.e. maneuver or drop bomb.

    The robots we are discussing here are somewhat comparable to modern combat aircraft. A person is making the decisions regarding maneuver and firing. One major difference is that the robot is remotely operated, unlike most aircraft.

    1. Re:Software already "waving around" weapons by Enigma2175 · · Score: 4, Informative

      A critical distinction though is that after you enter the target into the planes computer you still need to hold the weapon release("pickle" switch) to allow the computer to drop the bomb. The computer may make the choice of exactly when to drop the bomb but a human still has complete control over the computer at the the time. These new robots take that human right out of the equation and are meant to operate without any human guidance. Did you even RTFA? Here, let me quote part of it for you:

      Every UGV maker we've spoken to has stressed the importance of having a "man in the loop" when dealing with armed robots. As Predator drones have proven, an unmanned vehicle is capable of friendly fire, but the decision to engage will always be made by a human operator.

      Doesn't sound like they are "meant to operate without any human guidance" to me.

      --

      Enigma

    2. Re:Software already "waving around" weapons by Planesdragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The pilot enters inputs into a computer requesting particular actions and the computer decides if and how to implement those requests, i.e. maneuver or drop bomb. Ah, no.

      The computer decides HOW. The only time when it even comes close to "if" is if there's a fail-safe built in to the system -- and that's not so much deciding now to as being unable to figure out how.

      And if you think the Pilots in cockpits and controlling UAVs don't have to enter a specific command each and every time a weapon is fired, I've got a bridge to sell you
  8. I build robots as a hobby.... by zappepcs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hardware meets software at the corner of 'I didn't know it would do that' and 'how the fuck can a sensor cost that much' ...

    If they pulled the funding I'm willing to bet that there are political reasons.

    Other than that, there is only so much you can get a given set of hardware pieces to do. If they overpromised and underdelivered on the hardware, no more dollars for you!

    The trouble with robots is that they are not quite like jet planes. Once you commit on a new jet, you have to wait for it to be a complete failure in the field, and have already invested millions of dollars. When the investment is orders of magnitude less, it takes less of a reason to decide to pull funding.

    If the govt. folk want a robot that just has to do things that can't be done in that form factor, or for the stated price, it's a game of get your money and get out of the contracting for a bit only to come back later for more contracts.

    Perhaps the real reason it's being pulled is that it is designed for urban combat in non-sandy areas? Like say... oh... fucking main street in your home town?

    If Iraq was just the proving ground for gen-1 of robocop, pulling funding is a way to push it underground and out of the public view untill they can pull it out of the robocop dispatch center and use it against the appropriately large starving/out of work demonstrators in a city near you.

    No, no tin foil hat for me, I truly do believe that the neocons and the Bush administration are exactly that evil.

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
  9. A quick glance... by WwWonka · · Score: 2, Funny

    ....and I thought this might have been the first /. article on new robotic AI anti-reproductive methods.

  10. Damn that Sara Conner... by Kenja · · Score: 3, Funny

    Damn that Sara Conner, keeps blowin up mah robots!

    Course, we can always make more death bots.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  11. They haven't really been pulled... by uniquename72 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...they just look like us now.

  12. Re:Well... by Overzeetop · · Score: 2, Informative

    Every bit is sacred? Is that how robots do it, a whole bunch of 1's headed in a race to get to the 0 first? The two bits become a nibble, nibbles become bytes, bytes become words, and pretty soon you've got the start of a new robot?

    (All you old timers...how long since you've heard of four bits as a nibble? Wasn't that the name of an Apple magazine?)

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  13. I felt good about things until by mykepredko · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Reading through the article, I found that Qinetiq put in the following quote:

    SWORDS is currently deployed in Iraq, and has been there uninterrupted for almost a year.
      There have been no instances of uncommanded or unexpected movements by SWORDS during this period, whether in-theatre or elsewhere. A few years ago during the robot's development, there were three minor movement issues that were expected, identified and addressed during rigorous stateside testing--prior to the Army's Safety Confirmation back in 2006. Here is what actually happened:
    - One uncommanded movement was caused by a loose wire (result: redundant wiring on every circuit).
    - One was caused by a solder break (result: double solder).
    - The third, which may not even count, was a test of the robot sitting on a 45-degree incline in 90-degree heat to see how long it would last. After about two hours and 30 minutes, the motor started to overheat and shut down so it wouldn't burn out. That caused SWORDS to start to slide backward down the incline. The operator stopped it.

    Any comments made after this timeframe about setbacks related to the robotics industry were hypothetical--never in response to some nonexistent SWORDS incident after the Safety Confirmation.


    What is "double solder"? I can understand having redundant wiring and coming up with a way to automatically turn the robot perpendicularly to the slope to minimize energy lost keeping its place but you have to make sure the soldering is done correctly, you don't resolder something and expect it to be more reliable (actually, the reverse would be true).

    Can anybody comment?

    myke
    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
  14. Legality of autonomous weapons by MixMasterAnonCoward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I recently published a law journal article that was featured on BoingBoing today that addresses many of these issues, particularly with respect to autonomous and brain-interfaced weapons. A summary can be found here: http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/04/neuroweapons_war_cr.html. The article itself can be found here: http://organizations.lawschool.cornell.edu/ilj/issues/41.1/CIN109.pdf.

  15. Foster-Miller robots by Animats · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Foster-Miller has several robot product lines. The TALON line is widely deployed, mostly for bomb squad use and such. There are a number of variants. The SWORDS robots appear to have been a low-volume prototype design. The new MAARS line is more modular, with field-replaceable options ranging from a manipulator arm to a gun turret, and different configurations can replace the TALON and SWORDS units. If you look at the pictures, SWORDS looks like a prototype, with stuff bolted onto a TALON track base, but MAARS looks like a finished product.

    They're all rather dumb teleoperators.

    Foster-Miller also makes the Big Dog legged robot for Boston Dynamics. That thing actually has some autonomy, using Boston Dynamics software.