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December 1, 2004 12:23 PM PST
Army to deploy robots that shoot
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Putting guns on robotic vehicles is a natural evolution of the technology, which is being adopted to decrease risks to personnel in the field, the company said. Several robots, including the Talon and the PackBot from iRobot, have been used to conduct surveillance missions such as taking pictures inside the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, during the conflict. Other robots have been mounted with "distruptors," guns that disable bombs and mines.
A robot coming next year from John Deere and iRobot will ferry supplies to and from the front, navigating its travels with little human input.
A robotic vehicle with a machine gun will essentially enable soldiers to stay in a safe area while attacking an enemy.
Unlike most robots, the machine gun-mounted Talon won't be autonomous. People will guide it via radio commands or fiber networks and then have full control over the gun.
"Driving, observing and shooting are always done with a man in the loop," the Foster-Miller spokesman said. "The labs like autonomy, but the users themselves always like to have control."
The Talon weighs about 80 pounds, travels at 5.2 miles per hour and can go about 20 miles on a battery charge. In "wake up" mode, in which the unit conducts surveillance but remains mostly dormant, a battery charge can last about a week. The Talon was used in Bosnia to dispose of grenades and during the cleanup of the World Trade Center.
The company has received more than $65 million in orders from various defense agencies.
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It's either that, or become a living battery for the horrible, horrible Machines and their Agents.
Seriously though no one will ever make weapons of war completely autonomous, like the article said, humans dont like not having complete control over things that can kill them.
-J
My biggest problem is if you take too much of the person out of war what is the incentive NOT to go to war. In the past its always been the cost of war in terms of human life and resources. If you take the human life out of the cost it makes it that much easier for a society to say screw it lets go to war. As it stand the American public already is, IMHO, a tad to brazen about sending our men and women off to war.
And its at that point things have already gone too far.
The mind shudders to think what would come next. Genocide? Sure, why not? World War? Sure, why not?
How about resolving disputes by playing a lively game of Risk or Monopoly? The human race will be better for it.
It seems they could have made it smaller and faster if they would have created a robot specific armory for these creatures.
However, I would even argue against that conclusion - since MOST POLITICIANS who wage war are NOT affected by their decisions. Their children are never in harms way - it is always another person's future they are calously playing dice with.
This is in no way a reflection of today's administration, but also of the past ones that preceded it - across ALL countries in the world. It is never the politician who has to bury the child they have worked long and hard, and sacrificed much to raise.
Deploying automatons to the battlefield will only increase the cost of war in economic terms - since they are less agile, and probably easier to take down when put up against an organized team of humans.
As for the author who commented on Israel vs the Arab World - it is also sad to say that that obeservation is still too true. The hatred in that region is so intense, that they are blinded by it - and the "cost" of war for them will always be very low.