NewScientist: Robot infantry get ready for the battlefield

[sabra]

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19125705.600-robot-infantry-get-ready-for-the-battlefield.html

Robot infantry get ready for the battlefield

Sword totes a standard machine gun (Image: Qinetiq) "Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply." So said the armed robot in Paul Verhoeven's 1987 movie RoboCop. The suspect drops his weapon but a fault in the robot's software means it opens fire anyway. Nearly two decades later, such fictional weapon-toting robots are looking startlingly close to reality - and New Scientist has discovered that some may eventually help to decide who is friend and who is foe.

Sometime in the coming months, chances are that we'll be seeing TV reports that an armed remote-controlled robot has been used in anger for the first time. "They will appear when they appear. I can't talk about when that may be," says Bob Quinn, general manager at Foster-Miller of Waltham, Massachusetts, whose machine-gun-equipped robot, called Sword, was certified safe for use by the US forces in June.

Robots have already shown their mettle in defensive roles, detonating improvised bombs in the UK, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. Foster-Miller's Talon robot and its rival PackBot, from the Massachusetts-based company iRobot, are the lightweight robots now used for these tasks. These tracked machines, controlled by an operator sitting in an armoured vehicle, are capable of being driven at high speed and use manipulator arms and grippers to place a small explosive charge to disable a suspected bomb.

Now versions of these robots are being developed that will allow troops to manoeuvre and fire a variety of weapons. iRobot has built a prototype equipped with a 20-round shotgun. "It will be able to fire over four dozen different kinds of shotgun ammunition, everything from large slugs that would kill an elephant, to buckshot that would cover a wide area," says Joe Dyer, head of iRobot's military division.