Robot Rebellion Quelled in Iraq

opencity writes "The Register reports that the (perhaps inevitable) robot rebellion has been avoided ... for now. 'Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.' Gizmodo also has a good photo."

Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov...

[Eivind]

Much too late. The US has deployed armed flying "hunter-killer" robots for several years.

not the first time a "robot" cannon has gone wild.

[advocate_one]

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 [wired.com]

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[rossz]

I see you only believe what comes out of the MSM for your Iraq news. In reality, things are mostly going rather well over there. Hospitals, schools, and businesses are being built. Most places are peaceful with some remaining hotspots. The Iraqi army is taking a more active role in dealing with the insurgents and extremists with our armed forces taking on more of a support role. But you wouldn't know that reading the NY Times or any of the other major newspapers. From what they say, Iraqi is a bloodbath and nothing good happens there.

Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov...

[vux984]

I -strongly- suggest you read Asimov's robot novels, in particular

I, Robot (absolutely NOTHING like the movie)

Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun
Robots of Dawn
Robots and Empire

Asimov is smarter than you give him credit for. :)

$230K per robot

[Mathinker]

The Wikipedia article on these robots [wikipedia.org] (POV warning: it reads like an ad from the manufacturer), says that each one (of the weapon-equipped version, anyway) costs $230K. You'd think that at that price, it'd pay for organized crime from an advanced nation to figure out how to jam the transmission to/from the robot, and make away with a few.

Actually, even a good thick black net might be enough to disable the sensors on this thing. Or maybe use a large electromagnet attached to a pickup truck with a long enough cable?

OTOH, $230K is the cost to the army. It's probably worth less as stolen goods. If I know the Army, it's probably worth a lot less.

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[call-me-kenneth]

80-90,000? You're out by a factor of between five and ten. The Lancet study made it 5-600,000, and that was 18 months ago IIRC - before the worst of the sectarian terror got going.

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[Random Destruction]

And i tend to disagree with people that say 1000 is a bloodbath. More people die in a month from car accidents then we have lost in the ENTIRE operation. Anyone remember WWII? 1000 is a drop in the bucket.

You're suggesting that only 1000 people have died in Iraq? I think you need to check your figures.

They never learn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, 20-odd years ago, there was a story about a weapon called Sergeant York / DIVAD. It was an unmanned vehicle with fully automated AA guns. On its first test, top brass and politicians were sitting nearby as a remotely controlled helicopter came in. The vehicle's guns started to swivel... and kept going past the helicopter, apparantly deciding its target was really (among) the viewers! Fortunately, it was either shut down in time or it had a fail safe installed (fire safety zone, like guns on warships not being able to shoot in the direction of the superstructure) and the program was shelved after a subsequent investigation revealed that the malfunction was due to the fact that electronics had gotten wet after having the vehicle go through a car wash or somesuch. Prompting one general to remark: "Of course, in Europe (its intended environment, this being the Cold War period) there is no such thing as rain..."

Wikipedia just mentions that the thing had problems like confusing its guns with its targets and somesuch. Still. Epic fail.

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[BigDukeSix]

Not sure which number you consider bogus, but if it's the reference for the >100,000 dead Iraqis, you want, look no further than the New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008 issue, pages 484-493. The article is entitled "Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002-2006".

This is the first war that has had a careful statistical study of civilian deaths. Since the entire world knew this war was going to happen well in advance, the WHO sent researchers to perform what's called cluster analysis- they identified 10,000 households and then visited them repeatedly over the next three years to determine actual mortality. They then extrapolated to the population of the country as a whole.

Result: 151,000 excess violent deaths (95% CI, 104000-233000).

Stupid article. Real problem.

[Animats]

Stupid article. Real problem.

The SWORDS robot isn't autonomous; it has the autonomy level of an R/C car.

Something like this happened in the 1980s with the Sgt. York Air Division Air Defense Gun, which was an automated antiaircraft weapon. During a demo, it pointed its guns at the reviewing stand. The project was canceled. (Arguably, it was canceled for other reasons. The DIVAD was built as a response to the USSR's ZSU, their radar-directed anti-aircraft gun. This class of weapon is useful if you're being attacked by a squadron of helicopters, but it can't hit fast-movers like fighter-bombers. Only the US attacks with large numbers of helicopters, because you have to have both a big budget and air superiority to do that. So it wasn't something the U.S. Army needed to defend against. A few guys with Stingers could stop any small scale helicopter assaults.)

The point, though, is that the U.S. military has a very low tolerance for this class of mistake, and sizable projects have been canceled for it. This was the very first deployment of an armed ground combat robot to a war zone. Three units went to Iraq. The cancellation of the project is a sizable blow to the future of armed combat robots.

Re:One of the problems.

[NoisySplatter]

I think you're misunderstanding how this particular machine operates. It has nothing to do with software , nor is it capable of operating autonomously. It's all about mechanical components and remote control. There is not even a hint of targeting, motion compensation, or stabilization.

I operated one of these systems on top of my truck in Iraq. It was possibly the biggest waste of effort ever. When we went over even slightly rough terrain it would shake itself apart so badly that i had to tighten its bolts of several times a day. If i could find the appropriate sized allen wrench that is. Even then it would stop moving without any apparent reason. Like it was stuck or something.

The view it offered was vastly inferior to just being in the turret myself. I couldn't see anything that wasn't straight in front of it. Ultimately we gave it back to the armory, told them it was broken and we didn't want it back. In other words, that machine is shit. I'd rather stick halfway out the top of of an armored truck than use it again.

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[STrinity]

100,000 dead Iraqis, you want, look no further than the New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008 issue, pages 484-493. The article is entitled "Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002-2006

According to the paper's abstract [nejm.org] there were several areas where they were not able to survey because of security concerns, and so they took figures from Iraq Body Count, which is very far from what I'd consider a scientific source. On top of that, they figure that the areas they couldn't survey themselves are those where most of the deaths take place, so they weight the IBC figures accordingly. So I'll take these numbers with a grain of salt.

Bottom line is, there isn't enough reliable data to determine how many people have died in Iraq, or how the post-invasion mortality rate compares to the pre-invasion period.

Re:Totally hilarious!

[Yvan256]

You mean Zero One?

Re:Replacing a little gun with a bigger one

[Alomex]

and erroneously described as a "robot", although it is neither human-like in appearance nor autonomous in operation.

The formal definition of robot does not mention "human-like" or "autonomous" as a requirement:

According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) a robot is a machine which can be programmed to perform tasks which involve manipulative and in some cases locomotive actions under automatic control.

The Swedish Industrial Robotics Association defines a robot as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multi-purpose manipulative machine with or without locomotion for use in industrial automation applications.

A robot has three essential characteristics according to the Australian Robotics and Automation Association:
        It possesses some form of mobility
        It can be programmed to accomplish a large variety of tasks
        After being programmed or commanded, it operates automatically

There are essentially two main types of robots: a manipulating robot (or mechanical manipulator or industrial robot) conformed of an arm and a general mobile robot with or without arm whose main function is as a transport. In this course we will study both types of robots.

The Japanese Industrial Robot Association defines six classes of industrial robots:
1. Manual manipulator.- Controlled by an operator (such as teleoperated robot).
2. Fixed sequence robot.- A stand alone robot operating in sequence and performing a predetermined and unchanging task.
3. Variable sequence robot.- Similar to Class 2 but with preset data that is easily modified.
4. Playback robot.- The robot is trained by a human operator and then repeatedly performs the requires steps in sequence.
5. Numerical control robot.- The human operator controls the robot through changing a program or entering numbers, rather than through training mode.
6. Intelligent robot.- The robot has the means to understand its environment and adapt to changing conditions as it completes its task.