The Inside Story of the Armed Robot Pullout Rumor

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.""

Armed Robot Pullout

[Dunbal]

Oh my, the title of this story leaves itself very, very open.

Did it pull out in time? When can we expect the baby robots, do we finally have self replicating machines? Etc.

Are you a software engineer?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

"It's OK for the first bridge to fall down, we can always fix it with a service pack" or "well Beta bridges always fall down": that's not something you hear a civil engineer say.

Same with a machine waving around a deadly weapon.

A quick glance...

[WwWonka]

....and I thought this might have been the first /. article on new robotic AI anti-reproductive methods.

Damn that Sara Conner...

[Kenja]

Damn that Sara Conner, keeps blowin up mah robots!

Course, we can always make more death bots.

They haven't really been pulled...

[uniquename72]

...they just look like us now.