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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.
from the someone-call-for-an-exterminator dept.
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
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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)
Re:Hey, its the ED 209 (Score:4, Informative)
Is this a trick question?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"I had a guaranteed military sale with ED-209. Renovation program. Spare parts for the next decade. Who cares if it worked or not?"
Idea from BSG (Score:5, Funny)
The Government Said So... (Score:3, Insightful)
coughWATERBOARDINGcough
Yep, the government must be right!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Government Said So... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:The Government Said So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Saaaaay..... are you wearing your uniform?
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
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)
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...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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?
Parent
Re:The Government Said So... (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, the part that says illegal combatants STILL HAVE RIGHTS, and the right to a trial is explicitly mentioned.
Parent
It's Inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's Inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:It's Inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Any mod with a sense of humor will mod me Redundant.
Evolver cannot lose! (Score:2)
Department of redundancy department (Score:5, Funny)
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"I'll be back" (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"You have 4 more seconds to comply...3...2...1. Lethal force authorized!!!"
Sgt. Buzzkill (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, they may not get orders to kill, but
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Neeeed input!
Ooops! (Score:4, Funny)
EX-TER-MI-NATE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Traduction (Score:4, Funny)
Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Someone who works on robot sensors (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"It looks like you're trying to shoot an insurgent. Would you like help?"
Do the words "Aegis Class Cruiser" ring any bells? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Do the words "Aegis Class Cruiser" ring any bel (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
No autonomous but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No autonomous but.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
ROV (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Never Say Never (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Robot Army! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Robot Army! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent