Armed Robots Could Be On Our Battlefields Within 5 Years

From the title of this article I bet there are many of you that were expecting something like the T-800 holding a sub machine gun… thankfully that is not what we can expect, at least not yet. What you can expect to hit our battlefields in the next few years is effectively a Wall-E with a few big guns welded to it.

There are four major robotics companies pitching their ideas, HDT Robotics, iRobot, Northrop Grumman and QinetiQ. The new range of robots were fitted with M240 machine guns and put through live-fire demonstrations at Fort Benning, an event that was nicknamed the “Robotic Rodeo”.

“They’re not just tools, but members of the squad. That’s the goal,” Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning told Computerworld. “A robot becoming a member of the squad, we see that as a matter of training.”

The robots were able to hit targets that were 500 feet away, while showing performance that could see them put to duty within five years. While sending them out to fight as armoured killing machines is one likely purpose, it is more likely that they will serve as support for human soldiers due to the many other features that they incorporate.

Automatic weapons, anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers and more can be strapped to these things, but it is also cable of carrying 1,000 pounds of weight, it can charge batteries and power other systems (it is effectively a generator) and can go through areas that are not safe for humans, making it just another vital survival tool.

Thank you Wired for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of The Terminator and Wired.