India To Develop Military Robots For Warfare

WoodenKnight writes "Indian DRDO chief Avinash Chander has told reporters that development of robotic soldiers would be one of his 'priority thrust areas', saying that 'unmanned warfare in land and air is the future of warfare.' He foresees robotic soldiers assisting human soldiers initially but, he hinted at forward-position deployment of such robots. He gave a timeline of at least a decade for the project to see any practical use but said a number of labs in India are now working on this."

Comments

seems a bit specialized for the current state

[Trepidity]

If you have well-developed robotics expertise already, you're in a much better position to develop more specialized robots, like robot soldiers. India doesn't really: both its robotics industry and its research are relatively small sectors at the moment, far behind the state of the art in countries like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, or the USA. They're going to have to fix that before robot soldiers are going to emerge out of it.

Of course, this might just be a way of selling robotics funding, so maybe that's the goal.

Re:seems a bit specialized for the current state

[Anonymous Coward]

How to get good at something: Try doing it.

Re:seems a bit specialized for the current state

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the other hand, if you are trying to get funding for basic research approved, attaching weapons to your grant proposal can be very helpful indeed...

Since actually getting a robot to kill somebody(in a manner more sophisticated than a land mine) requires all sorts of other capabilities to be worked out first, you can just write "Killer Robots OMG National Security" on your application and then spend a decade doing the basic research you actually wanted to do anyway.

Re:seems a bit specialized for the current state

[Anonymous Coward]

Indian teams always do shitty in international robotics competitions, but not for lack of effort or talent. Their shoe string budgets are usually propped up by ingenuity & hard work where a significant portion of their labor ends up invested in DIY shit which better capitalized teams were able to just buy CoTs. It will be interesting to see if government financing of the field will end up in their hands or if it will be plundered by corruption.

If the faculty supervising the team exercises authority to blow the team budget on useless bullshit in exchange for kickbacks then it will not.

This is in contrast to "First World" countries where college textbooks are never written by the professor requiring them, and PRISM refers to optics.

Re:seems a bit specialized for the current state

[Nadaka]

Robots killing people is fairly easy, simple motion activated systems combined with range finding and ballistics algorithms will do the trick. Add facial/body type/gait recognition to keep it from going after so many shadows.

Getting them to do that while also not killing the right people is the hard part.

Re:Ban it before it gets out of hand!

[AmazingRuss]

...so only those that abide by the treaty won't have them.

Like it or not, this is the future.

how many hungry in India?

[MickyTheIdiot]

Just sayin'..

We have the same problem in the U.S....

Re: Oblig

[JustOK]

The US shares a border with it's biggest enemy. In fact, the US and it's biggest enemy are on the same side of the border.

Easier route to escalation

[Lazarian]

I've always thought that a lot of people don't realize that having lives in harms way on -either- side of a is a deterrent in itself to using weapons that would be horribly beyond all conscience (that in itself, well, depends on who's pushing the buttons). India and Pakistan say, have nuclear weapons. If Pakistan had a few infantry and tank divisions, along with a couple border villages wiped out by robotic troops, I'd think that the bar would be lowered as to them responding with a tactical nuclear strike to eliminate the robot threat. Then things would snowball from there. The situation wouldn't go from escalating from conventional to chemical in between at all. War is about killing people. When one side has troops that are machines, the other side does not have to restrain themselves to the moral restraints that have kept whatever tenuous leash on us throughout our history. Just a thought.

It's COMPLETE nonsense

[argStyopa]

...honestly, not even worth reporting.

1) India has trouble building tanks, airplanes, ships, and subs...far more 'pedestrian' tools of warfare. Their programs are bloated and rife with corruption, delays, technical failures, overpromises, etc. such that they are only capable of producing inferior equipment at ridiculous costs.

2) India is the second most populous country in the world. If there's anything they DON'T need it's to replace the dirt-cheap organic, self-replicating, minimally-functional dubious cannon fodder they currently have with hideously expensive, fragile, dubious cannon fodder made out of plastic and metal that they don't have and likely will never be able to build for the foreseeable future.