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Wall-E Lookalike Wins British War Robot Showdown
longacre writes "Following in the footsteps of DARPA's Urban Challenge, in which robotic vehicles had to navigate a complex obstacle course without human intervention, the UK upped the ante with its own Ministry of Defence Grand Challenge: within a mock enemy village, robots were instructed to find potential targets and make distinctions between armed troops, roadside bombs and snipers. The winning entry, Team Stellar's SATURN system, actually consists of three vehicles: a low level drone and a tracked ground vehicle transmit reconnaissance data to a high-altitude robotic relay aircraft, which proceeds to phone that data home to a central processing center. Upon announcing the winner yesterday, MoD said they are 'carefully considering if technologies demonstrated in the final can be incorporated into future frontline kit for the Armed Forces. It is possible that the winning team will have invented a product that can be developed rapidly for the front line.'"
Might I suggest you do so first? Show your superior human intellect in figuring out if that guy not wearing a uniform and showing no visible weapon is "armed troops or unarmed civilians".
No matter which you decide and by whatever criteria, you will be wrong a good percentage of the time.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Just about any technology can be used to kill. At least with military hardware, the best weapon is one that never needs to be used.
Also, is there something intrinsically better about being mauled by an old fashioned cannonbal than a grenade? Or a crossbow bold instead of a sniper bullet? Ideally, if you could develop and maintain a sufficiently large enough technology gap you woulnd't need to fight. Military development is as much about saving lives through conflict deterrence as it is about winning wars by killing people.
Bottom line, guns don't kill people, people do. All I know is that I'd rather bring a gun to a knife fight than a knife to a gun fight. I'd also rather be the one wearing a bulletproof vest in a gunfight, and the one with the armour peircing bullets etc.