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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.'"
The trash is people.
God spoke to me.
Just what the world needs, a robotic killing machine that likes to hold hands.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
What I like is this:
Would it not, perhaps, be better to invest time and energy into robots which "make distinctions" between armed troops and unarmed civilians?
Read Pynchon.
Well, there are notable similarities.
For example, it has tank treads, just like WALL-E. Also, it has binocular-type eyes, similar to WALL-E.
However, the same could be said of an AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter sitting on top of an M1A1 Abrams tank. :)
Did no one else see this movie? This is clearly a step towards Johnny 5, Wall-E be damned.
OK, OK, OK, First off, That robot looked nothing like Wall-E, Second Wall-E was based on robot designs we are capable of making now, so the similarity's are not that striking. Treads: Easy to build and practical, used in most designs except Asimo and Big Dog. Stereo eyes: useful and also integrated into a lot of designs. The big center box: holds batteries and CPU's, though doesn't compact shit. Johnny-5 looked more like this robot then Wall-E, but both are based on real science, J5 was more down to earth then the cartoon who had way to many degrees of freedom without actuators to make me comfortable.
Or French.
Or lazy and French.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
well put. and note, if we're talking about armed battlefield robots, targetting the opposition with lethal force, false positives should NOT be acceptable.
Quote:
within a mock enemy village, robots were instructed to find potential targets and make distinctions between armed troops
This is obviously designed for use in "the war on terror" where most of the fighting is against mock enemies....
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Why uncomfortable, did it touch you..? ;)
DARPA and the MOD tried to have a joint challenge, however most of the British robots were shot or run over by the American robots during the exercise.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
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.