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Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq

Posted by Zonk on Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:15 AM
from the someone-call-for-an-exterminator dept.
Robotics The Military
NightFalcon90909 writes "You may have heard that armed robots were yanked from Iraq after a gun started to swivel without it being told to do so. 'A recent news report that armed robots had been pulled out of Iraq is mistaken, according to the company that makes the robot [Foster-Miller] and the Army program manager. 'The whole thing is an urban legend,' says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command.'"
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Submission: Whoops! Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq by Anonymous Coward
[+] The Inside Story of the Armed Robot Pullout Rumor 105 comments
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that the initial rumor of the SWORDS robots being pulled out of Iraq — and its subsequent correction — were just that: sensationalizing in the blogosphere. Popular Mechanics has a lengthy update to its original scoop, digging into the sketchy responses from defense contractors when pressed about the bot's actual duties in battle. From the article: 'Although others have used our story to generate a false online rumor about these armed UGVs, the nature of those "technical issues" that Gotvald mentioned in his statement, and that Qinetiq and Foster-Miller have yet to address directly, remains a mystery. Until someone can explain why SWORDS lost its funding, and what exactly it is — and isn't — being used for in Iraq, the rumors are likely to continue. If this is the dawn of the era of robotic infantry, things are off to a decidedly rocky start.""
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  • Hey, its the ED 209 (Score:4, Funny)

    by enzo_romeo (756095) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:18AM (#23078702)
    Who cares if it works?

  • Idea from BSG (Score:5, Funny)

    by T-Kir (597145) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:19AM (#23078720) Homepage
    Maybe they put the Telencephalic inhibitors back in?

  • The Government Said So... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SeeSp0tRun (1270464) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:20AM (#23078732) Journal
    So the United States Government says this didn't happen... They also said the prisoners of war were treated fairly...
    coughWATERBOARDINGcough

    Yep, the government must be right!
    • Cover-up! Cover-up! You can be sure something is true if it has been officially denied. Calling this story an urban legend is the falsehood here. These Terminators are going to be the end of us all!

      • These Terminators are going to be the end of us all!
        Now that you mention it, they are consolidating and restricting access to a lot of "in the air" government databases.. making a SKYNET if you would...

      • Re:The Government Said So... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jellomizer (103300) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:47AM (#23079140)
        Question is what if the government is telling the truth...

        You cant trust the government if it hides anything.
        You cant trust the government if fully discloses everything (they must be lieing)
        You cant trust the government if it give you need to know.

        How do you convience Joe Six pack that we did go the moon.
        That is the problem of Conspericy theories, The more proof that you give them the more elabrate the conspericy is.
      • Sure, because we've redefined what prisoner of war means, what you say is technically true. So I'm sure you won't mind if the Ministry of Truth operatives come and apply some 'joyous fun electrical stimulation' to your 'special happy place.' Hey, words can mean whatever we want them too, right? If we capture someone and they aren't wearing a uniform, they must be a terrorist and not a P.O.W., right?

        Saaaaay..... are you wearing your uniform?
              • Okay, you win, we waterboarded illegal combatants we captured during hostilities, you happy now? Does that make it better?

                And we are decidedly not the best guys available. The best guys available would have meant a real UN coalition.

      • Re:The Government Said So... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by H0p313ss (811249) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @12:06PM (#23079400)

        No P.O.W. was waterboarded, as a matter of fact. If you have evidence to the contrary, please, post it here. Otherwise, post a retraction. Thank you.

        A valid point, but the doublethink used to consider the prisoners NOT POWs would make the signers of the declaration of independence spin in their graves and George Orwell and Joseph Stalin nod sagely.

        There are no POWs here... and no Americans in Baghdad...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Torodung (31985)

            A little study of military history would have revealed that throughout the Revolutionary and Civil wars (among others), any prisoners captured out of uniform were almost always denied treatment as "prisoners" and were often instead promptly executed as spies.

            Yes, and in those same days it was common law in England that you should hang for stealing a loaf of bread.

            Why are you suggesting we dial back legal precedent 200 years? Because "military history" somehow demands it? It is absolutely not practiced with the same ruthlessness today, and your "guideline" is not part of the rules of engagement for urban warfare.

            Urban centers contain masses of civilians who have an intrinsic, and sometimes legal, right to defend themselves from well-armed, crazy-ass militias an

      • Re:The Government Said So... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by msuarezalvarez (667058) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @12:29PM (#23079760)

        I do not accept that waterboarding anyone at all is acceptable. But, in your view: how do you know that the person you are waterboarding is willing to kill or aid in killing thousands of civilians? If you can be so, so wrong that your intelligence can make you invade a whole country in search of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist, in howany ways can you be wrong about the intentions of a person?

        • Re:The Government Said So... (Score:5, Informative)

          by alan_dershowitz (586542) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @12:59PM (#23080198)
          This isn't rocket science, an illegal combatant is any combatant that does not conform to set Geneva Convention requirements for a LEGAL combatant. The Geneva Conventions specify the requirements for LAWFUL REGULAR forces. If you do not conform to this definition, you are by implication an "unlawful", ILLEGAL or irregular combatant. It's the inverse of a defined LEGAL combatant. Stop perpetuating this dumb semantic argument. If you want to take it up with the Bush Administration, it's really easy to do, because they are liars and only quote the Conventions where it's convenient and omit arguments that contradict their interpretation. For example, when referring to illegal combatants, they conspicuously do not mention the following:

          4. A combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party while failing to meet the requirements set forth in the second sentence of paragraph 3 shall forfeit his right to be a prisoner of war, but he shall, nevertheless, be given protections equivalent in all respects to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention and by this Protocol. This protection includes protections equivalent to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention in the case where such a person is tried and punished for any offences he has committed.

          In other words, the part that says illegal combatants STILL HAVE RIGHTS, and the right to a trial is explicitly mentioned.

  • It's Inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Al Mutasim (831844) * on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:20AM (#23078734)
    Three false moves prior to certification is not a problem. Compare this to false moves by soldiers carrying rifles, which are universal. Even if a robot were to point its gun in the wrong direction, the person controlling it, and there always is one, would not pull the trigger. The Army will (and should) let the Talon see action. Gun-shooting robots are inevitable.

    • Re:It's Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:22AM (#23078772) Homepage Journal
      I know nothing about these things or guns in general so maybe I'm off base, but if the bit that makes it swivel engages without being told, what on Earth makes you so confident that the bit that makes it shoot will not engage without it being told?

      • Re:It's Inevitable (Score:5, Informative)

        by SwordsmanLuke (1083699) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @12:16PM (#23079576)
        I work for a robotics company and (among other things) have worked on modifying a TALON (on which these SWORD robots are based) to work with our control software.

        if the bit that makes it swivel engages without being told, what on Earth makes you so confident that the bit that makes it shoot will not engage without it being told?
        To answer your question, not a damn thing. The TALON I worked with was really flaky. It shook and twitched so frequently the guys who owned the TALON referred to the bot has having the "Foster-Miller shakes."

        I hope the SWORD bots are much better quality than the TALON bot, because, quite frankly, there is no fraking way I'd trust one of those things with a gun.

          • Re:It's Inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)

            by SwordsmanLuke (1083699) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @02:35PM (#23081416)
            I apologize, it was not my intention to cast aspersions on the abilities or competency of the engineers who have worked on SWORDs. My comment was intended to communicate my experiences with the TALON and express my concern over attaching a weapon to any robotic platform.

            I work in the industry and have yet to see any robot which never moves when it's not supposed to. Robotic control is a non-trivial problem and though I don't doubt the abilities of the engineers at Foster-Miller, I have not yet seen any robotic platform I would trust implicitly with a lethal weapon.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by MightyYar (622222)
            I ain't no smartifitician, but I think the varmants went and made two solderifications. Twice. Double. Redundant. Two. So if one fails, the other still survives. Another solder connection. One extra interconnect. A more reliable connection.

            Any mod with a sense of humor will mod me Redundant.
  • You know how I know calling your armed robots SWORDs is a bad idea? Because I saw this movie, that's how: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112993/ [imdb.com]
  • The article is worth it just for this quote: "So, now there is now redundant wiring on every circuit."
  • Like The Terminator, they'll be back.

  • Sgt. Buzzkill (Score:5, Funny)

    by explosivejared (1186049) <hagan.jared@NOspAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:22AM (#23078770)
    "It can't shoot anyone [without orders]," Black says. "It's not an autonomous vehicle."

    Can we not dream that there are artificially intelligent armed to the teeth robots ready to kill us at a moments notice?! If you take that away, what do we have left?! Do not bring your holier than thou facts to our paranoia party. If we believe hard enough that there are crazed, deadly robots on the loose, maybe... one day our dream might come true! So step off Sgt. Buzzkill.

    • "It can't shoot anyone [without orders]," Black says. "It's not an autonomous vehicle."

      Can we not dream that there are artificially intelligent armed to the teeth robots ready to kill us at a moments notice?! If you take that away, what do we have left?! Do not bring your holier than thou facts to our paranoia party. If we believe hard enough that there are crazed, deadly robots on the loose, maybe... one day our dream might come true! So step off Sgt. Buzzkill.

      Ok, they may not get orders to kill, but

    • Can we not dream that there are artificially intelligent armed to the teeth robots ready to kill us at a moments notice?! If you take that away, what do we have left?! Do not bring your holier than thou facts to our paranoia party. If we believe hard enough that there are crazed, deadly robots on the loose, maybe... one day our dream might come true! So step off Sgt. Buzzkill.

      I'm just waiting until some one let's loose the bots and has them conquer and expand out in any direction without thinking ahead of w
    • No, but if they get struck by lightning, they can be a good friend [youtube.com].

      Neeeed input!

  • Ooops! (Score:4, Funny)

    by mcecil (1248130) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:23AM (#23078786)
    (Hastily tears down "Hail Robots" sign)

  • EX-TER-MI-NATE! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aquaseafoam (1271478) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:25AM (#23078820)
    EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE! *Cough* Hrm hrm... If a crossed wire can cause the gun to swivel, then a crossed wire can also cause the gun to fire. Anyone else surprised to see that they failed to include multiple redundancies? Of course, one could put forward the argument that the more redundancies there are, the more there is to go wrong.
    • You're confusing complexity with poor engineering. Properly designed redundancy adds to complexity while only serving to increase reliability. If it doesn't, it is not the cause of the complexity, but a fault of the engineer himself.

  • Traduction (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ariastis (797888) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:27AM (#23078854)
    s/Its an urban legend/All witnesses have been silenced/

  • Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:5, Informative)

    by usul294 (1163169) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:30AM (#23078890)
    I'm an engineer for a company that writes some of the signal analysis for robots, mostly military. They are designed to look for people, noise, or something easily sensible and train their guns on that location and await further instruction. Its a de facto law for military robot design that a human makes every firing decision, but the robot is allowed to aim and ask if it can fire. If a US soldier did something loud (shoot a gun, slam a door, yell) theres a good chance thats what set off the targeting routine. There was never any chance of a weapon being fired, except of course if there was a malicious operator. I have not worked on this type of robot, so I can't be sure of the process. There might be a user command that says "go look for target". If the robot looked for a target without ever being commanded that'd be a pretty horrendous software error.

    • Re:Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TTURabble (1164837) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:35AM (#23078986)
      But did you implement the three laws?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kartoffel (30238)
        Rembmer, Asimov's laws of robotics are science fiction. They are relevant in same way as the laws of the old testament: both are prominent literary works...of fiction.
        • I think a lot of people will disagree with you here. Maybe not Slashdot members but a lot of people (me included) believe that God really did write the 10 commandments on stone tablets.

      • Re:Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jtheletter (686279) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @01:34PM (#23080602)

        "There was never any chance of a weapon being fired," Clearly they have developed some magic bit of electronics and fool proof code.
        Let's go over the various realistic reasons for why there might not have been a chance of a weapon firing:
        1) Weapon safety was on.
        2) Weapon was not loaded.
        3) Weapon was not attached to robot base.
        4) Firing system was not installed/powered/engaged.

        Remote firing circuits while not 100% perfect (only because nothing is) are a mature technology. They are used all the time in law enforcement and especially in EOD remote detonations. Could you also please tell us all what certifications were passed for this firing circuit? Until you can point to that specific data and tell us why it fails, then you're guessing at things you don't know.
      • Clippy just got a whole new lease on life...

        "It looks like you're trying to shoot an insurgent. Would you like help?"
  • During initial testing, the automated vessel identified Catalina Island as a fast moving object and proceeded to lock her guns on her escort vessel (which was nowhere near Catalina at the time). The system (NT 4.0 based, IIRC) had to be shut down, as there was no manual override and the Navy didn't feel like burying that many seamen at sea.

    After which (with engines and navigation offline) she had to be towed back to port.

    Y'know, after those problems were addressed, the Aegis-class cruiser entered service and is still a very effective platform for the US Navy. Not that I think it wise of us to arm automated robots, but from the military perspective this is only a minor setback.

    • Sounds fishy to me.
      None of the ships involved in the initial Aegis tests can be described as "automated vessels". The initial radar tests were aboard USS Norton Sound, later tests would have been on USS Ticonderoga. Neither use Windows NT, and in neither ship was/is the Aegis system connected to the propulsion or navigation. Pulling the plug to the point where the ship was dead in the water wouldn't have been necessary on either.

      Also, there is no "Aegis Class Cruiser". The Ticonderoga class cruisers use the Aegis combat system, but so do several other ship classes (Arleigh Burke, some Japanese and Spanish ships as well).

      There was an incident where an experimental Windows-based ship management system (again, separate from the combat system) caused a Ticonderoga-class ship to lose propulsion.

  • No autonomous but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kjella (173770) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:33AM (#23078960) Homepage

    "It can't shoot anyone [without orders]," Black says. "It's not an autonomous vehicle."
    It doesn't have to be autonomus to do bad things. Say for example you can order it to rotate the turret and to fire its gun, then the radio transmission is jammed. If you programmed it really stupid and it kept waiting for a stop command that never came, it'd fire in circles until it was out of ammo. Obviously this is a very naive example, but sure the robot can do plenty harm unless it stops cold any time the transmission is having a hiccup. Even then I'm sure there's ways to make it react unintentionally.

    • Re:No autonomous but.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by SwordsmanLuke (1083699) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @12:05PM (#23079394)
      Disclaimer: I haven't worked on SWORD robots, but I have worked with the TALON on which the SWORDS are based.

      The sort of scenario you describe is prevented with a heartbeat based killswitch. E.g. a signal is sent to the robot at a regular interval. If, for some reason, the heartbeat is not received, the robot immediately shuts down and stops moving. So, as you said, the robot "stops cold any time the transmission is having a hiccup." It can be a pain sometimes, but it's hell of a lot better than the alternative.

      In the same way, dangerous commands (such as "shoot gun") require the robot to receive said command constantly in order to continue that action. So a robot being commanded to turn and fire just before losing comms would at worst, just turn, and typically do nothing.

      Also: +1 Ironic Sig.

  • ROV (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TomRK1089 (1270906) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:40AM (#23079052)

    So it's basically a Remote Operated Vehicle, not some kind of autonomous drone. Makes sense that they wouldn't want to give up on a potentially useful project so quickly then. If they had, I'd say they were throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    Of course, on the other hand is the fact that the Middle East has to be one of the most inhospitible environments for robots, what with the extremes of temperature, sand getting into internal parts, et cetera. I'm curious on what kind of tests they did with SWORD that these connections and such weren't fixed before deployment. Did they not understand that "Works perfectly in a sealed lab environment" doesn't translate to "Will work in field, without regular maintenance, in a non-ideal environment?"

  • Based on past performance... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hyades1 (1149581) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:40AM (#23079056)
    Given his track record for pointing guns in the wrong direction, perhaps we should start calling the little darlings, "Cheneys".

  • Never Say Never (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bostongraf (1216362) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:48AM (#23079152)
    To all those saying that a human is "required" for the trigger, and it could "never" shoot on its own, I would like to remind you of this past October in South Africa:

    "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."
    This was reported here: Wired Danger Room [wired.com] The most unreal quote from that link is (IMO) this:

    But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position. By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.
    The robot was set to reload automatically, as well, and the only reason it stopped firing is because they hadn't provided it with more cartridges.

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