Interview: The Man Who Makes Killer Robots For The US Military

From CNET:

It sounds like the opening scene of a Terminator movie: a team of intelligent air, land and sea robots working together to hunt down a group of human soldiers. Detected by infrared sensors mounted on a cyber-jetski, the platoon is forced to take shelter in a beach bunker. Stealthy flying drones then co-ordinate an attack, flushing the panicked warriors right into the arms of a pair of tracked and armed ground robots. Game over, man.

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My Comment: An easy to read article and interview.

Military Robots To Get A Virtual Touch

Photo: The Packbot Explorer

From Technology Review:

A modified game controller will give military bomb-disposal experts remote touch.

iRobot, the company that makes military robots as well as the Roomba vacuuming bot, announced last Friday that it will receive funding for several endeavors from the Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC).

One project will see the company develop controllers that give remote robot operators sensory feedback. The US military currently uses iRobot's wheeled PackBot in Iraq and Afghanistan for tasks such as bomb disposal, detecting hazardous materials and carrying equipment.

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Disarmingly Cute: 8 Military Robots That Spy, Fly, And Do Yoga

From Discover Magazine:

A new generation of military robots are coming soon to a battlefield near you. These new battle bots are more WALL*E than ED-209—cute, small, and innocent-looking, rather than giant and murderous.

But while they may appear adorable, the latest generation of robotic warriors can do a lot more than box up trash. Here are a few examples of these cute but deadly robots in action—leaping walls, flipping trucks and…doing yoga?

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Campaign Asks For International Treaty To Limit War Robots

Robots are synonymous with modern warfare, but what are the ethical implications? (Image: Ethan Miller/Getty)

From New Scientist:

A robotics expert, a physicist, a bioethicist and a philosopher have founded the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) to campaign for limits on robotic military hardware.

Roboticist Noel Sharkey at the University of Sheffield, UK, and his colleagues set up ICRAC after a two-day meeting in Sheffield earlier this month. Sharkey has spoken before of ethical concerns about military systems that make their own decisions.

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Leaping Robot Hops Closer To War

From The Danger Room:

It’s one giant step for robots on the battlefield. Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico has just released video of its leaping robot in action, showing the Precision Urban Hopper clearing a tall metal fence.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the autonomous robot is designed to reduce military casualties by providing reconnaissance. The robot uses a powerful leg to help hurdle itself over tall barriers. Once completed, the four-wheeled robots will use its leg to hop more than more than 25 feet, says Jon Salton, the Sandia program manager

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Saddle Up For The U.S. Army's Robotics Rodeo

Robot Gunslinger: Steady there, cowboy Mark Rutherford/CNET

From Popular Science:

The Army invites robotic handlers to show off their wares.

At the first Robotics Rodeo, hosted this week by the U.S. Army and the Fort Hood III Corps in Texas, war machines replaced bulls and horses. Soldiers and civilian contractors used the opportunity, starting on Wednesday, to inspect a lineup of robots that could potentially find a place on the battlefield.

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Robots Gear Up For Duty In 'Rodeo' At Fort Hood

The Howe & Howe "Ripsaw" MS1 is ready for its demo, followed by a manned Ripsaw MS2 and an Armored Personnel Carrier carrying two operators, one to drive the Ripsaw and a soldier manning its weapons, plus a driver. A DIscovery Channel crew is also taping the demo run. The first-ever "Robotics Rodeo," which encourages development of autonomous systems in support of our nation's warfighters, is drawing the world's leading robotic designers and builders to the Texas-based event. Fort Hood's III Corps and the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) are hosting the Robotics Rodeo Sept. 1-3 on the grounds of the world's largest U.S. military base, Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Paul Moseley)

From The Star Telegram:

FORT HOOD — Under a searing sun, breathing clouds of dirt and gulping metallic-tasting water, some of the nation’s best defense geeks tried to impress the infantrymen and tankers of the U.S. Army.

They converged on a remote part of Fort Hood last week with robots that responded to voices, giant trucks that didn’t need a driver, three-dimensional light and range detectors, unmanned track vehicles with machine guns, all of it for an event billed as Texas’ — certainly the Army’s — first Robotics Rodeo.

The "rodeo" was the brainchild of the Fort Hood commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, a 30-year war fighter and an engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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My Comment: This is a very informative article, but what impressed me the most were/are the pictures .... a large collection that gives a clear indication on where UAV vehicles are going for the Army.

5 UAVs That Are Going Places—Alone (With Video!)

X-47B Navy UCAS

From Popular Mechanics:

Gawkers from the armed services, media and defense industry gathered this week in 98 degree heat to watch military robot demonstrations at the Unmanned Systems Demo, an event hosted by the military and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The crowd braved the sweltering Maryland summer to watch companies large and small fly sensor-studded UAVs on an unused naval aviation airfield. Here’s a roundup of five of the most notable flying droids on hand, with video of those that displayed their antics.

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At Secret Conference, Scientists Consider the Possible Rise of Autonomous Killer Robots

Faster, Robot! Kill! Kill!

From Popular Science:

The long-awaited robot-led holocaust may happen any day now. That seems to be the finding of a secret conference of the world's top computer scientists, roboticists, and artificial intelligence researchers. The clandestine meeting focused on topics surrounding advancements in robotics and how they could quickly spiral out of human control. This includes the danger that robots could autonomously kill humans -- a danger than conference participants believe may already exist.

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Darpa's First Robotic Ornithopter Hovers, Flies Like a Hummingbird

From Popular Science:

The creepy, tiny wing-flapping UAV, designed for indoor flight, is modelled on hummingbirds

A few years from now, bird-watchers may be in for a double take: that flapping creature in the distance? Nope, not a bird. Mutant dragon fly? Nope--it's Darpa's latest unmanned aerial robo-sentinel, inspired by the flight mechanics of birds.

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March Of The Killer Robots

Killing machine: one of America's unmanned Reaper hunter-killer aircraft
Photo: PHILIP COBURN

From The Telegraph:

The development of mechanical soldiers and remote-controlled tanks and planes is changing war for ever - but the moral consequences have often been overlooked.

It's the most realistic shoot-'em-up game ever. The player has a choice of two planes: a Predator with two Hellfire missiles, or a Reaper with 14. The action takes place in the Middle East, where you can attack villages and kill the inhabitants with impunity. But don't bother looking for it in the shops: to play this deadly game, you'll have to travel to Creech Air Force base in the Nevada desert. That's because the planes are real, and so are the casualties.

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My Comment: The important sentence in this story is the following:

On the ground are between 6,000 and 12,000 robots, up from a mere 150 in 2004.

Extrapolating from current growth, one can argue that in 5 more years we will probably have anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 plus warbots in stock and/or in a war zone.

Future Warbot Powered by Xbox Controller

From The Danger Room:

The military has long been interested in unmanned ground vehicles that can haul soldier equipment or scout perimeters. Equally important, the vehicles must be simple and intuitive to operate.

Over at the Flash Blog, Lee Brimelow has an interesting scoop on how an XBox 360 interface was designed for the R-Gator, an unmanned vehicle prototype John Deere and iRobot first unveiled in 2004. Software firm T8DESIGN built the Adobe Integrated Runtime interface for the R-Gator; Brimelow has some images of how it looks on screen.

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A Word With The Inventor Of The Battlefield Snakebot And The Wall-Scaling Snailbot

From Popsci.com:

Israeli roboticist Amir Shapiro looks to the animal kingdom to design robots that can go where humans can't.

The Israel Defense Forces are preparing to deploy a camouflage-wearing, camera-toting robot snake. The spybot, which slithers through cracks and caves using principles of motion derived from those of actual snakes, is just one of roboticist Amir Shapiro's clever designs based on animal physiology. We visited Dr. Shapiro's lab at Ben Gurion University of the Negev to get a closer look.

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Robots At War: The New Battlefield

(Click Image to Enlarge)
MQ-9 Reaper. Image from 3D Allusions

From The Wilson Quarterly:

It sounds like science fic­tion, but it is fact: On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghan­istan, robots are killing America’s ene­mies and sav­ing Ameri­can lives. But today’s Pack­Bots, Preda­tors, and Ravens are rela­tively prim­itive machines. The coming generation of “war-bots” will be im­mensely more sophisti­cated, and their devel­op­ment raises troubling new questions about how and when we wage ­war.

There was little to warn of the danger ahead. The Iraqi insurgent had laid his ambush with great cunning. Hidden along the side of the road, the bomb looked like any other piece of trash. American soldiers call these ­jury-­rigged bombs IEDs, official shorthand for improvised explosive devices.

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My Comment: A long article that examines the past, present, and future role of robots in war. This is a must read article, and one that should be bookmarked for rereading in the future.

Meet Ember, The Littlest Warbot

From Popsci.com:

iRobot's lovable fighting machine can be toted in your pocket.

iRobot's multipurpose PackBot has helped lead the way among war-bots, disabling improvised explosives and carrying out recon missions for snipers. But soon paperback-sized robots such as the Ember prototype could join their larger cousins on the battlefield.

Ember's strength rests with numbers and disposability -- one soldier could theoretically carry around several of the bots and place them to create a networked mobile swarm. Each robot might carry several radios and sensors that make up a small part of the larger wireless network envisioned in the Army's now-gutted Future Combat Systems.

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Real Soldiers Love Their Robot Brethren

Concept art shows a human resistance fighter facing off against a Hydrobot from the movie "Terminator Salvation." Credit: Warner Bros.

From Live Science:

Human warriors have long spoken of the bonds forged in combat and of becoming a "band of brothers." The fact that some of those fellow soldiers are made of metal has not discouraged human feelings toward them.

Thousands of robots now fight with humans on modern battlefields that resemble scenes from science fiction movies such as "Terminator Salvation." But the real world poses a more complex situation than humans versus robots, and has added new twists to the psychology of war.

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March Of The Terminators: Robot Warriors Are No Longer Sci-Fi But Reality. So What Happens When They Turn Their Guns On Us?

Killing machine: The SWORD is mounted with either an
M240 machine-gun, a grenade or rocket launcher

From The Daily Times:

They can fly, they can swim, they can spit out 550 high-explosive shells a minute. And most terrifyingly of all, they'll soon be able to think for themselves.

A few minutes before nine in the morning, and the young soldiers have no idea of the horror that is about to strike them. They are taking part in a massive military training exercise, involving 5,000 troops, and are about to showcase the latest in robotic weapons technology.

The MK5 anti-aircraft system, with two huge 35mm cannons, is essentially a vast robotic weapon, controlled by a computer.

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Killer Robots And A Revolution In Warfare

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn't suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds - dull, dirty and dangerous.

They are military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers and growing sophistication may herald the end of thousands of years of human monopoly on fighting war. "Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us," as Brookings scholar Peter Singer put it to a conference of experts at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania this month.

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My Comment: Reuters reporting on a story that bloggers .... including this one .... have been talking about for the past year. The main stream media .... sigh .... delivering the news a year later.

WNU Editor Confession: I posted this story because it gave me an excuse to post the above picture. Yes .... I am a Terminator fan. Now I need an excuse to post on the babes from Battlestar Galactica.

Chaos Goes Where No Robot Has Gone Before

From National Defense:

An autonomous tracked platform that can be used for troop extraction, resupply, and search and security operations was tested by U.S. Marines in this year’s Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand.

The diminutive Chaos robot which was developed by Autonomous Solutions Inc. of Logan, Utah, for the Army’s Automotive Research Development and Engineering Command, is designed to navigate in rugged terrain that previously could only be accessed by soldiers on foot.

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Robot Madness: Preventing Insurrection of Machines

USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) conducts a Phalanx live fire training exercise. The Phalanx is a fast-reaction, rapid-fire 20-millimeter gun system that automatically detects, tracks and engages threats such as anti-ship missiles and aircraft. Credit: U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

In Robot Madness, LiveScience examines humanoid robots and cybernetic enhancement of humans, as well as the exciting and sometimes frightening convergence of it all. Return for a new episode each Monday, Wednesday and Friday through April 6.

A robotic future holds the promise of providing tireless workers and companions for humans, but it can also evoke worries about an armed machine insurrection along the lines of the "Terminator" movies.

Experts consider that dark vision to be on the distant horizon, although they now point to other ethical issues that arise from the growing presence of battlefield bots and their potential to decide to attack autonomously, possibly as soon as in the next 20 years .

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