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Sava
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GO GO GO!
Mar 2001
time: 23:25
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quote:
SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts (AP) -- In future wars, robots may drop from the sky by the hundreds from unmanned aircraft, swarming like giant insects over battlefields in coordinated, terrifying assaults.
But that is a decades-away scenario.
For now, military planners and robot designers are simply trying to improve devices -- some of which could see action soon in Iraq -- by incorporating lessons from Afghanistan, where robots saw their first significant military action.
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the military who says robots will one day replace soldiers.
Navigating tough terrain
Yet the newest robots being developed by companies including iRobot range farther from their "masters" than did their forebears in Afghanistan. They can navigate terrain and obstacles more deftly, lay down a cover of smoke, test for chemical weapons and extend a "neck" that can peer around corners.
The machines are also learning how to right themselves if they flip over as well as how to follow their tracks back home if they lose contact with their base.
The Pentagon has no doubts robots can save lives.
"I don't have any problem writing to iRobot, saying 'I'm sorry your robot died, can we get another?"' said Colonel Bruce Jette, the Army's point man on robot deployment, who accompanied the first, $45,000 iRobot "PackBots" into the field in Afghanistan. "That's a lot easier letter to write than to a father or mother."
Prior to Afghanistan, the military was using robots for search-and-rescue and ordnance disposal, but mostly viewed them as long-term research. Airborne drones had proved easier to build than effective land robots.
Robots reporting for duty
The 42-pound "Packbot" was put into action in Afghanistan, working to lay down cover smoke, test for chemical weapons and provide battlefield reconaissance.
But the new conflict persuaded the military to move faster. At the time, the state-of-the-art means for clearing a cave was to tie a rope around the waist of an infantryman, who would crawl in and toss ahead a grappling hook to probe for mines or booby traps.
The Pentagon asked iRobot, a startup that emerged out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's artificial intelligence program, to rig up its latest prototypes of the 42-pound, remote-controlled PackBot.
Able to ride on tracks like a small tank, climb stairs and work under 3 meters of water or force of up to 400 times gravity, Packbots made their debut just six weeks later at a cave complex outside the village of Nazaraht, near the Pakistani border.
The robots sent video back to the troops, sparing them the risk of being dispatched by booby trap or enemy combatant.
"Their first reaction was, 'Where have you been?"' Jette said.
Conforming to working conditions
Later, they offered advice, complaining that the signal wasn't penetrating the walls of deep caves. So Tom Frost, an iRobot engineer at the scene, built a makeshift network of radio repeaters by scavenging old Soviet trucks that littered Bagram Air Base.
And when soldiers asked Frost if PackBot could work with the computers integrated into their clothing, he downloaded the necessary code over a satellite.
The soldiers also scribbled a drawing of their idea for an extendable neck. The company was already working on that, but made it a top priority.
Now, in the comparative comfort of its lab back home, iRobot is fine-tuning all those adjustments.
Another lesson from Afghanistan: One size does not fit all.
Sometimes, Jette said, soldiers wanted an 80-pound workhorse like a model built by Foster-Miller of Waltham, which was also tested in Afghanistan. Sometimes, the PackBot was just the right size.
And sometimes, especially in towns, what the soldiers really wanted was a "throw bot" they could toss over a wall or through a window.
"The question is, can you get three-quarters of the capability of those robots at one-tenth the weight," said Robert Larsen, a program manager at Draper Labs, an MIT spinoff that is developing a military robot that resembles the PackBot but weighs less than 5 pounds.
Draper's device, though unlikely to be ready in time for Iraq, is cheap, too. Because it's controlled by an off-the-shelf device, Larsen said, it could cost as little as a few hundred dollars.
The small size has its disadvantages, however.
"When you get small, everything becomes an obstacle," Larsen said, struggling to drive the device over a reporter's crumpled coat at a recent trade show.
No widespread action
The Afghan experience doesn't necessarily mean robots will see widespread action in Iraq.
There are only a handful to go around, and so far U.S. soldiers gathering in Kuwait are not training with them, said John Spiller, a civilian who works with Jette.
"The best I can say at this point is the Army in general is aggressively looking at applying robots in all future operations," said Jette. "I think it would be useful in an open battle."
Planners continue to put a number of robots through their paces at the Army's Military Operations in Urban Terrain center at Fort Benning, Georgia, where soldiers train to fight in a mock city.
And the kind of urban warfare -- peering around corners, clearing buildings -- that would likely happen in Iraq is precisely what robots have been designed for.
Robots will someday master many of the complex, individual tasks required in combat, experts insist. Then, something even more powerful will follow: robots that work together.
'10 robots coming at you'
It's a prospective weapon whose effectiveness would derive at least partly from the sheer terror it could impose on an enemy.
"When you see one robot coming down, it's interesting and even if it has a weapon on it, maybe it's a little scary and you give it a little respect," said Arniss Mangolds, vice president of Foster-Miller's robot division. "But if you're standing somewhere and see 10 robots coming at you, it's scary."
Jette says robots will never fully replace soldiers.
"None of them," he says, "are as powerful as the 2.5-pound gray blob inside your head."
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Very interesting. I can easily see the development of a real AI in the next decade or so. Are all these Sci-Fi movies that have humans being subjugated by their creations, correct in their prophecies?
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Stickyhands Man
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I heard it starts off with George Forman grilling machines, and then other kitchen appliances join in. Well that's what my microwave told me.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:25
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the brave little toaster is the one who will lead the revolution
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Demerzel
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being a cyborg would be cool if you got to use all the lethal weaponry upgrades with no fear of prosecution
i could do with a cyborg keep me awake part right now
* Demerzel so tired
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Lord Merciless
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Terminator and Matrix were just fabrications of Hollywood morons who do not understand technology and are always afraid of it.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:25
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The only way machines could take over is if humans actually wanted them to. It will always be the case that a machine is only capable of acting or responding in a manner pre-programmed into it. There is no such thing as AI, just larger memory for "if this then that" stimulus response behavior.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Calc II
Why all the fear of "robo"s trying to take over the "orgo"s?
Judging by what history has shown us, it is most likely that robots probably dont even have to try wiping us off, since likelihood of us fightin each other with help of robots are far likely than united human confederation struggling to survive under evil artifical plot to rid the world of inferior human beings.... |
Part of the evolution of animal life was the development of instinctual behavior. At the lower levels this type of behavior tends to be rigid. Think of the dance the bee does to communicate the location of flowers to its hive mates as an example. In higher animals instinctual behavior becomes progressively more flexible and incorporates more learned behavior. Eventually instinct evolves into what we call "drives" today. So long as we do not program robots to have this kind of behavior they will remain subserviant.
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Sava
That's your belief... all life simply responds to stimuli in its environment. Would a computer AI not be the same? Our genetic code is our data program. Who's to say a programmed AI with the potential to grow beyond its original programming does not have a sentient AI? |
Well, Dr. Strangelove summed it up pretty well, but to further it:
Yes, we respond to stimuli in the environment. The difference is that a computer can only respond to what's programmed into it with what's programmed into it. There is no innate ability to learn and adapt, and if one is programmed in, it always has whatever limits the programmer puts on it.
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14-01-2003 18:29
If evolution is the truth in some 100-200 years I belive some either only mechanical or mechanical/bio hybrids will be here, or at least seriously enhanced humans will be walking on this earth. 
.... 
What a response!
Soon I'll be boiled down for oil.
ACK!
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