The Brief Rise and Long Fall of Russia's Robot Tank

malachiorion writes with this report from Popular Science"Seventy-four years ago, Russia accomplished what no country had before, or has since: it sent armed ground robots into battle. These remote-controlled Teletanks took the field during one of WWII's earliest and most obscure clashes, as Soviet forces pushed into Eastern Finland for roughly three and a half months, from 1939 to 1940. The workings of those Teletanks were cool, though they were useless against Germany, and Russia proceeded to fall behind the developed world in military robotics."

Comments

In Soviet Russia,

[LynnwoodRooster]

Tanks, er, ah... I got nuthin...

Re:In Soviet Russia,

[myowntrueself]

In Soviet Russia robot tanks you!

Re:In Soviet Russia,

[bkmoore]

Tanks, er, ah... I got nuthin...

Tanks, but no tanks.

Perhaps the first but...

[Anonymous Coward]

By no means not quickly followed. In 1942, the Germany military fielded the Goliath tracked mine (basically a remote controlled bomb on treads.)

Military robotics is by no means new, its just that brutal battlefield conditions meant that the military shelved it knowing that it would be a VERY long time before it ever became battlefield useful (in spite of UAVs, we're still a long ways off from robotic tanks)

Re:Perhaps the first but...

[peragrin]

This is it exactly. Up until the 1990's we really didn't have bandwidth and control systems that could really do something like drive a tank remotely.

Look at it this way up the until the 1980's In order to course correct a missile or torpedo after it had fired that weapon had to trail a wire all the way behind.

Digital remote control took a long time coming, only in the last 20 years has it taken off. Still there is not enough battlefield bandwidth for a column of tanks to be remotely operated and be effective.

Re:Perhaps the first but...

[sumdumass]

There is enough bandwidth, our control systems are still a bit off though. We use laser communications in some situations and radio in others but tanks have since the 90's been able to communicate and coordinate their weapons systems for a while now. This makes them more effective in picking targets so 4 out of 5 tanks aren't shooting the same target and invalid targets can be eliminated before a shot is fired.

The biggest problem is the automation of the drive units. We can't seem to get a real time terrain picture in a way that the tanks can auto pilot around on or relay to an operator. This is an enormous task compared to flying a drone that doesn't have to deal with obstacles in or on the ground that can change in a matter of seconds in a combat situation.

Of course that is changing a bit with work done by DARPA and their autonomous challenges but as of now, it makes them a sitting duck to often trying to negotiate terrain. But the weapons systems have had the bandwidth for a while now and can pretty much pick the target, aim and fire while moving at great speeds with little assistance from a human. It's quite amazing really.

Re:Perhaps the first but...

[myowntrueself]

(Apache) AH64D, millimeter wave radar, radar hellfires and preferential fire zones. Ouch. Each missile is like a little robot. Drag a rubberband around clusters of targets on the display, unleash several missiles, each missile finds a target and boom, next missile, next target. That was so cool.

('Janes Longbow' was a way cool game yay)

I always wondered why my mechs didn't have these missiles :( (in the Mech warrior games).

Did they say

[Anonymous Coward]

"Exterminatesky! Exterminatesky!"?

Re:Did they say

[Anonymous Coward]

"Voisiko joku ystävällisesti kutsua Tohtorin?", the Finns lamented, watching the tanks rolling in the snow and occasionally colliding with the pines.

Re:Did they say

[bkmoore]

"Remember, you must think in Russian..."

Runner up?

[cold fjord]

Goliath: The Nazi Remote-Controlled Bomb

Re:Runner up?

[TWX]

If I remember what I read somewhere, the Russian/Soviet side lost something like 2500 tanks in the Winter War, mainly due to the Finns figuring out how to interfere with the treads to immobilize the tanks before setting them on fire...

A tank without a crew would go a long way in explaining how that happened, as there wouldn't be personnel to see the attack on the tank or to repel it while clearing whatever was used to jam the treads.

As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

Re:Runner up?

[tragedy]

As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

No kidding. That's the war in which the White Death, Simo Hayha was personally responsible for around .4% of Soviet deaths through his skill as a marksman and outdoorsman.

Re:Runner up?

[CptPicard]

As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

Well, I am Finnish and I'd like to point out that the Winter War is historically and culturally very much specifically a Finnish thing. The Scandinavians (Nordic countries west of Finland) had nothing to do with it, they don't consider it "their" war and they do not remember it as a substantial part of their history. The cultural image of "skiing and shooting" is equally as much Finnish.

Re:Runner up?

[Hognoxious]

If the Ukrainians were intending to massacre the Russians, they'd have done it straight away before the Russians got their goons in. They didn't.

Russia is secretly attempting to provoke what it's publicly claiming to prevent.

Link no longer there.

[dov_0]

Couldn't find the story the article originally linked to, but here's the wikipedia article on the teletanks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Re:Link no longer there.

[Tubepunk]

Okay, here's a link to the blog cited by the PopSci article. The blog appears to contradict the summary that the Russians were alone in developing these primitive robotanks:

There were similarly designed tanks also in the German army. There was the teletank V-4, there were small anti-tank “torpedoes” such as the radio-guided “Springer” and the “Goliath”, which would unwind an electrical control lead behind itself. A “Goliath” is found in the armoured vehicle museum at Kubinka. It is difficult to consider all of these designs as being successful. It was very difficult to direct a “Goliath” up to a tank even from a distance of 100 meters. The battery had a charge, which allowed for only eight minutes of movement, and the low clearance did not provide for sufficient mobility. Equipping these tankettes with a petrol engine did not save the situation. Nevertheless, they were able to carry out certain functions – including mine clearing and attacking fortifications.

The Russians tanks had the advantage in having a longer autonomous range, as the German tanks appear to be wired ("unwind an electrical control lead") rather than radio-controlled.

Robot?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was remote controlled. The V1 and V2 are much closer to a "robot" in the sense of a self-guided machine.

Re:Robot?

[meerling]

I agree, anything piloted by a human, even if remotely, doesn't really qualify as a robot.

Re:Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank

[WarJolt]

The owners of Slashdot have been previously grooming you by constantly promoting the nonsense of 'self-driving' cars - the first stage of Google propaganda to prepare the way for their robotic killing machines. The self-driving algorithms, while utterly useless for a vehicle that could tolerate not even one mistake, are perfect for robot tanks that can crush and slaughter a bus full of the 'other' without a murmur of complaint from the sheeple of the USA. By self-driving, the LAST thing Google means is 'safe' for civilians.

Tin foil hats are pretty fashionable, eh?

Car companies are investing millions in this stuff.
Without the DARPA we wouldn't have ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.
Of course this technology is going to emerge out of defense research, but it doesn't mean it won't be used for automobiles.

Re:Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank

[rtb61]

Robots to replace troops. Two big problems with people as soldiers, most of them don't want to kill people and avoid it even when commanded to do so, especially unarmed people. Those all to happy to pull the trigger quite often end up pulling the trigger when they aren't order to do so or at inappropriate targets. Training can exacerbate the problem especially when you fail to promote honour and integrity, then killing becomes all too much fun especially when you start enrolling all to inappropriate narcissists and psychopaths.

Robots eliminate the emotion on the battlefield, problem is it now takes much fewer personal and selecting those most willing to send those robots out to slaughter human beings means you are far more likely to end up with narcissists and psychopaths at the controls. Who when they start seeking to feed their ego and lusts, will cause a hell of a lot more carnage, especially when they are safe from the battlefield and believe they can blame everything on the robot.

Then of course that might be exactly what those who are willing to deploy robots to slaughter people are after, massive population reduction in targeted zones with no witnesses, either those idiots who want to brag about their slaughter activities or those soldiers with honour and integrity who oppose. I would never ever trust a country willing to deploy robots in the battlefield to slaughter people, whether it be airborne drones that fire at mobile phones with missiles or ground based killing devices. Their measure of contempt for human life pretty much equals my contempt for them as individuals, not as human beings of course, I would never ever condone their and their families random execution.

Article is a Definition Fail

[TrollstonButterbeans]

^^ We have a winner. A robot is self controlled.

A remote control plane or a remote control tank is not a robot.