Aussie Army Trains With Fleet of Robots On Segways

kkleiner writes "The armed forces of the world have already begun to hunt down and shoot robots. No, it's not the beginning of the man-machine war; it's a state-of-the-art training simulation that's very cool to watch. Australia-based Marathon Robotics has taken Segways and turned them into human-shaped autonomous robots capable of moving around streets and buildings just like people in a crowd! The Marathon bots can act like insurgents, hostages, or civilians, letting armed soldiers practice before being exposed to the real thing. The Australian Department of Defense already has a training camp using the robots, and the US Marine Corps will be establishing one this year."

Comments

Re:Ridiculous

[Gravatron]

Actually, the videos showed them using it as sniper training. In real life, the targets move around, scatter when shots break out, etc. You can't simulate that with paper targets, and shooting at real people during training generates a lot of paperwork.

Politics aside

[pwnies]

I would pay cash to be able to play this.

Re:Not to be obvious

[icegreentea]

The robots are for sniping practice. For long range shooting, nothing comes close to the actual thing. You really don't want to put real people out on the range.

I mean sure, they COULD just send their snipers off big game hunting, but that might not play so well.

Re:Overly complicated and expensive

[je ne sais quoi]

If you watch the video, they mention that the Segways lurch forward a bit when accelerating in a way that is similar to the posture of a human running. Also, I suspect that the stability that 4 wheels gives a platform is far too unrealistic to mimic humans well: If you ever read up on the physics of walking on two legs, you'll find that humans tend to lurch and sway a lot in a somewhat similar way to the segways.