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Why Robot Trucks Could Be Headed To Afghanistan (And Everywhere Else)

Posted by timothy on from the ok-so-which-tragedy-do-you-mean? dept.

malachiorion writes "I'm surprised I haven't seen more coverage of Lockheed Martin's autonomous truck convoy demonstration — they sent a group of robotified vehicles through urban and rural environments at Fort Hood, without teleoperation or human intervention. It's an interesting milestone, and sort of a tragic one, since troops could have used robotic vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's fascinating, though, is that Lockheed is hoping to get into Afghanistan just before the U.S. withdraws, to help ferry gear. Plus, they have their sights set on what would be the defense contractor's first real commercial product—kits that turn tractor trailers into autonomous vehicles. Here's my post for Popular Science."

3 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Beta sucks by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 4, Informative

    It doesn't work.

    1. Re:Beta sucks by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Informative

      Burn it with fire, sprinkle the ashes with holy water and rock salt and bury them in the Love Canal.

  2. The Beta, The (last one from me today) by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)

    On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

    If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

    We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
    We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

    Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
    Commentors - only discuss Beta
    http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

    Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

    -----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----

    Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
    Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
    Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))