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Street Fighting Robot Challenge
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:41 PM
from the gun-jack dept.
from the gun-jack dept.
ianchaos writes "There's no better way to assure the eventual destruction of mankind than by the event sponsored by Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency. Newscientist has a good writeup of the robot challenge, which is to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier."
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One word (Score:2, Funny)
Re:One word (Score:4, Funny)
Get a Roomba for cleaning the house; get a Bolo for destroying it.
Parent
Counter attack (Score:5, Funny)
Page is swamped (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Page is swamped (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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I for one (Score:2, Funny)
These guys don't get out much (Score:2)
Lisping Tyrolean accents are optional, but highly expected.
DARPA Worldwide? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Okay, whatever you do, NEVER EVER use that as an opening line with a woman.
- Greg
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No, I think he should be obligated to say that one in the interests of full disclosure. Things like communicable diseases and terminally bad taste in movies really should be brought out into the open early so people can make informed decisions.
Cheers
The Change in Combat Mentality (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time someone is killed by a US soldier (or even UN peacekeeper for that matter), more enemies of the United States are bred. It doesn't matter what the conditions were or the whether or not the rule of engagement were followed.
I understand this is Singapore issuing the challenge, but I would like to see robots (in any format) capable of navigating buildings and hogtying humans without injuring them. The robots themselves may be at risk but the unknown targets inside could be detained and processed under law. Make them infra red or heat sensing so they can operate in the dark. But I am strong believer that combat needs to move away from lethal harm to the individual. More importantly, you would remove the lethal harm to our own troops. Wars are no longer solved through death. What seems to be prolific in today's world is something the Native Americans called a "Mourning War" where you kill my brother so I kill two of yours and the problem compounds upon itself. There was some sort of mental shift after 1914 where you didn't just destroy a force and the country bowed to you. Each side has put themselves on a pedestal and, as a result, even the populace believes they are right or correct.
I heard once someone say that the only way to end conflict these days was total elimination of one side of the conflict. They weren't suggesting the implementation of that or genocide, they were merely pointing out the conundrums that exist over pieces of land like the Gaza Strip.
What does Singapore hope to accomplish with this challenge? Why do they think that wars of the future will still be bent on how lethal your weapons are? Can't they see that the United States has more and better lethal weapons than any other organization in the world
Re:The Change in Combat Mentality (Score:4, Interesting)
It is much easier, more effective and cheaper to kill humans than to render them unable to continue combat but still alive. Afterward, corpses don't sue or raise a human rights ruckus. And remember, we're talking about Singapore, not the U.S.
Parent
Re:The Change in Combat Mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, indiscriminate killing isn't very useful unless you're willing to commit genocide. Most conflicts are not total war in the style of WWII where carpet-bombing, nuking, and firebombing entire cities was accepted.
Look at it this way, if you're going to send an indiscriminate kill-bot into a home to slaughter everything, why not just drop a 5000 lb bomb on the place and be done with it?
Parent
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Maybe it's a nice building?
Cheaper to Kill? How Much Is Our Image Worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
These zip ties cost maybe 10 or 20 cents each. They are not fool proof. And the way in which you get the human into the physical position to apply the zip ties is a problem an engineer has yet to solve. But if you're telling me that this is too expensive. Or that, in the aftermath of the war, the individual (who at no time had any risk save maybe a broken arm through failed cooperation) will sue you. I will have to laugh. Have you priced bombs or even arms and ammunition recently? Not cheap. And through the use of those, the alternative is death. You can't put a price on life.
Well if that sentence doesn't send a chill down my spine, I don't know what does. If you're using that as an actual retort to my original statement, I certainly am confused. Are you suggesting we kill them all because they'll be silent afterwards? Sounds like a war crime which is probably something I'd fear more than a "human rights ruckus". Wasn't that the idea behind the My Lai Massacre [wikipedia.org]? With the most recent Iraq war, hopefully we'll realize that our image to the rest of the world is just as important as our arsenal when entering a conflict.
I'm not suggesting we use this in a civil setting or time of peace in our own society or anywhere. I consider even this an extreme measure only to be used in times of war.
I don't care if we're talking about Morocco, I hold all governments to a high standard in this modern world. Oh, well, Singapore has a history of sneezing at human rights, so I'll let them slide? No way. If anything, we need to be more critical of them.
And I will assert that oftentimes the reason they feel they were doing the right thing is because of the deaths of people they loved from prior conflicts with their enemies. The trick here is to minimize the deaths and expose those causing the conflicts for what they really are. If you can't expose them to their own people, than maybe you shouldn't be there in the first place. Imagine if we found every Al-Queda member and marked them and made publicly known to everyone around them that they were part of an organization responsible for the deaths of innocent men, women & children, surely their families and societies would hold them as murderers. In our society, when your brother is murdered and you murder the person responsible, you are still tried for murder. Just because they did a crime does not give you the right to replicate the crime on them. And I think a lot of societies today agree with this or should come around to realizing that you can't let people murder each other. Justice & the truth are the only answers.
Parent
Re:Cheaper to Kill? How Much Is Our Image Worth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to nitpick too much, but people put a price on life all the time. Now, if you want to say that we shouldn't put a price on life, that's possibly another story.
I think you do raise some interesting points and I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but ultimately I have to feel like it's a little overly optimistic/naive. I don't, for example, really see people who currently shelter violent terrorists shunning them if their crimes were to be known, because said people probably don't share your/our view of what constitutes innocent victims. How great it would be if the solution to all problems was just to tell people the truth, but I don't think that's the world we live in.
Obligatory Simpsons: Salesman: Surely you can't put a price on your family's lives?
Homer: I wouldn't have thought so either, but here we are.
Parent
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Why?
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The goal in combat is to get the other side to stop fighting. Most of the time, the only sure way to get that result once the shooting starts it to kill them. If there were a way to stop someone from trying to kill you as quickly and effectively as shooting them in th
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The former is the result of the latter, so the comparison is a bit odd.
At any rate, reducing the bodycount of a war seems to be a lot easier to accomplish than stopping politicians from lying.
Shooting bullets is cheap, but it appears many armies aren't really concerned about cost. Deploying robots that subdue people without harming them seems not that far-fetched...
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But you right, Incompacitating a military person is more effective then killing them. It take on the order of three people
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1) Do what thou wilt
2) See above
3) GOTO 1
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What is the Real Problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
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And i agree, I the goal is war, then there needs to be human element to decide when they have had enough. If the goal is to outspend the other side then other tactics could be more sucessfull.
That's not a BAD thing... (Score:2)
Isn't that one of the laws of acquisition? "War is good for business"?
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Would we stop fighting after the robots are gone?
If the answer is Yes, I would like to propose that a Counter-Strike or Battlefield Tournament be held instead.
Seriously, I believe that these kinds of robots are much more suited in police work like capturing individuals or such...
Too much too soon (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as they... (Score:2, Funny)
What language should they be written in? (Score:2)
Just an observation (Score:2, Funny)
Those cats were fast as lightning - HA
At first it was a little bit frightning
*insert asian music*
Which quote do I want... (Score:3, Insightful)
slavery (Score:5, Insightful)
Robots probably won't destroy humankind, but they could allow us to be enslaved by other humans.
At the moment, for someone to be in a position of power, they need to convince other people of their merit (regardless of whether they're a despot, or an elected official).
Robots like these could allow wealthy people to subjugate others - private-army style.
It would also absolve the high-level commander for any atrocities as they could attribute it to "machine malfunction" - oh how I look forward to that new euphemism.
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well.. (Score:5, Funny)
But can they dance? (Score:2, Funny)
Note to slashdot "editors" (Score:5, Informative)
than '[th]&n, '[th]an (conjunction) 1 a -- used as a function word to indicate the second member or the member taken as the point of departure in a comparison expressive of inequality; used with comparative adjectives and comparative adverbs
then '[th]en (adverb) 2 a : soon after that : next in order of time b : following next after in order of position, narration, or enumeration : being next in a series c : in addition : BESIDES
Purpose of such contests (Score:5, Interesting)
The purpose of such contests is typically not to field an operational capability. It is very unlikely that the winning robot or a variant will actually be deployed. The main purpose is to encourage industry and academia to perform research in certain fields, such as machine vision, control systems, AI, etc. This is a long term investment. The secondary purpose is to gauge the state of the art in these fields while advancing it. This is the short term gain.
The contest is modelled after the DARPA Grand Challenge, which concentrates on outdoor navigation. Similarly, you will not see autonomous combat vehicles anytime soon. However, DARPA has certainly focussed interest and effort toward all the fundamental research questions needed to achieve such a feat. DARPA also now has a good idea of what is possible when planning acquisitions and upgrades, and is able to better assess the technical risk of new developments. If the US Army asked for an autonomous UGV tomorrow, DARPA would be able to give a good estimate of how much it would cost, how long it would take, and what is realistically achievable (then the politicians will come in and screw things up).
Such contests are an admission that the state of the art is no longer in the military or intelligence communities, but in the acadamic and industrial spheres. AES was developed outside the NSA, for example. More and more equipment is COTS or MOTS (commercial / militarized off-the-shelf). The days when you could get a national laboratory (Singapore has one too) to singlehandedly advance the state of the art are long over. Nowadays inhouse research tends to be focussed on either security-sensitive fields, or areas no one else simply wants to touch. This trend will only accelerate in the future.
I liked the title (Score:4, Funny)
what a disappointment.
i mean, I would have even settled for robots playing street fighter.
or people street fighting over robots...
or something...
Pick your favorite death-bot! (Score:3, Funny)
2. iRobot -trendy, comes in black and white
3. Hunter-seeker - finders weepers
4. Terminator - capable of winning state elections
5. Matrix agent - software
6. Matrix squid - hardware
7. Suicide booth - manufactured by Bender
8. Robots are our friends - powered by old peoples' medicines
9. Martian Reprisal Interplanetary probe - that was for our babies!
10. Transformers - nasty power supplies
11. Cowbot Neal - no nuclear warheads. less lethal than iRobot. Lame.
The Rules of Robot Fight Club (Score:5, Funny)
2nd RULE: Terminal WILL NOT transmit data about ROBOT FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If command "HALT" executed, or terminal fails to respond, or gives hardware error code the fight process will be killed.
4th RULE: Only two robots to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight per session.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as required to complete the operation.
8th RULE: If this is terminal's first session at FIGHT CLUB, the terminal MUST fight.
Pattern recognition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Robocop (Score:5, Funny)
Based on the trend, probably in California politics of some kind.
Parent
I don't think you should count on help. (Score:2)
Oddly enough, there was an article I saw in Wired recently about the actor who played RoboCop; apparently he had a mid-life crisis and is now a professor of Classical Studies at some university. I think his specialty has something to do with Roman aqueducts.
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Go Robo! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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