Korea To Build Front-line Combat Robot 293
christchurch wrote to mention the story of a plucky Korean robot that has been built for combat. From the article: "According to design blueprints released during a meeting of science-related ministers, the robot will have six or eight extendable legs with wheels allowing it to move like an insect over uneven terrain. The robot will be armed with various weapons and will operate both by remote control and its own artificial intelligence system"
Minor clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Some people think "North" when they hear about Korean military stuff.
South Korea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Constantly hearing about combat-bots (Score:3, Informative)
There are many Military Robots [wikipedia.org] that have been actively used in the past. Most of them are drones for mapping or reconnaissance. Note that the Ottawa Treaty [wikipedia.org] of 1999 forbids the production of armed autonomous robots, but South Korea obviously refused to sign the treaty (as did China, Russia, the US, and about 40 others).
The US has used the PackBot [irobot.com] in combat situations, but I believe it has never had munitions mounted on it. It looks like iRobot's vacuum cleaning and navigation technology in the Roomba [irobot.com] can be reused to "sweep" for land mines in a minefield.
Re:Science Vessel .. . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about the Asimov rules? (Score:1, Informative)
To the fundies all up in the hizzy: God created us to be thinking and rational beings, in His image. You narrow-minded, intolerant bastards do not fit the image of my God.
Re:Constantly hearing about combat-bots (Score:5, Informative)
UAVs are everywhere and are common place in almost all operations. There is the Predator [airforce-technology.com], which when armed with the hellfire missile system [fas.org] can be very leathal [fas.org] and the little Raven [army.mil] which can be utilized at the squad level. The new Viper Strike [defense-update.com] bombs, which are starting to be depoyed on UAVs, are very usefull in urban situations where you need to take out the enemy without harming innocents in say, the next room. This is a big development because the "insurgents" like to take shelter in mosques, schools, and hospitals, etc. The new Hardstop bombs [strategypage.com] help in this situation as well (but I do not think they are carried by UAVs). Anyways, here is an exellent video/story [blogspot.com] which mixes captured enemy video with the video from the UAV which nails them. I love UAVs.
Re:What about the Asimov rules? (Score:3, Informative)
False. From UTexas RRR [utexas.edu] (and many of the "forward" parts of his books):
The word 'robotics' was first used in Runaround, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). I, Robot, a collection of several of these stories, was published in 1950.
In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly (left), and their associates at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering of University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high - speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator)
Courtesy http://www.softlord.com/comp/ [softlord.com]
He was a visionary, seeing events that would come about nearly half a century later. Computers were in their infancy; nothing more than a novelty that would barely fir into a room, much less a human-sized head... Building one was quite out of the question.