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

Posted by timothy on from the pew-pew-pew dept.

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."

7 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. In Soviet Russia, by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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    1. Re:In Soviet Russia, by myowntrueself · · Score: 4, Funny

      In Soviet Russia robot tanks you!

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  2. Perhaps the first but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)

  3. Did they say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Exterminatesky! Exterminatesky!"?

  4. Runner up? by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Goliath: The Nazi Remote-Controlled Bomb

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  5. Link no longer there. by dov_0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

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  6. Robot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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