He adds that in tests, it’s been 94% accurate and is smart enough that ‘”It can tell the difference between a 9 millimeter pistol and an AK-47 or an M-16.”įoster Miller has similar plans to upgrade its current generation of ground robots. ‘”You’ll actually see the sniper before the smoke disappears from the shot,” said retired Admiral Joe Dyer, who leads the military programming at iRobot. For example, the company has already tested out a Packbot armed with a good-old fashioned shotgun, because it is “so versatile.” The robot can now fire a variety of ammunition, including non-lethal rubber bullets, rounds that can blow down a door, and even powerful “elephant killer” bullets.Īnother version is called the REDOWL (Robotic Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers), which uses lasers and sound detection equipment to find any sniper who dares to shoot at the robot or accompanying troops, and then instantly targets them with an infrared laser beam. Now, most Packbots perform EOD roles with the ensuing addition of fairly simple effector arms and grippers.īut as new add-ons are developed, the same robot will be able to take on a wider set of battlefield roles. For example, iRobot’s original Packbot just had a digital camera that sent back views of what the robot was seeing, making it essentially a mobile pair of binoculars. The next wave of new robots to be deployed on land will mostly be “new and improved” versions of existing platforms. We are seeing the very first stages of this technology.” These are not what you are going to see when they are actually deployed in the field. As one robotics executive put it at a demonstration of new military prototypes, “The robots you are seeing here today I like to think of as the Model T.
They range in size from tiny eight-pound robots to the world’s current biggest robot, a 700-ton robotic dump truck capable of hauling 240 tons of earth at a time, which also served as the model for the character Long Haul in the Transformers series. The robotic systems just rolling out or already in prototype stage are far more capable, intelligent, and autonomous than ones now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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