Pentagon To Use Robots In Place Of Soldiers

by Nikhil Sundaram    August 05, 2008

It is the sign of things to come.Slowly what was once fiction is coming into the realm of reality.Robots are gradually making their presence felt in the real world.

For example,Pentagon is planning to replace some 30 percent of its soldiery with robots by the year 2020.Even now robots are taking over from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.Examples could be unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots which are used for explosives detection.

Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University who lead this innovation say that machines still need the human touch.The Pentagon's robotic force is operated by someone from a remote location.This could be either through a joystick or a computer
screen.

From a military standpoint when they say 'Robot' they could mean anything from self-driving trucks to what one would conventionally think of as a robot.However these advancements in technology
raise a few ethical questions.For instance,whom do you blame if a robot kills someone.

"It's a chain of command thing",says Smart."You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision.You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions" .Also the experts are more interested in making robots that act intelligently and not necessarily ones that decide intelligently.

Few,Smart's Ph.D student is interested in the robot human relationship.So he is working to develop a system wherein the robot carries out a task while keeping a human in the loop and with the ability to set new goals for the robot.Few is now working using a Wii controller which uses natural human movements to communicate with the robot.

These developments suggest that the increasing trend of introducing us to the world of robots and make us realise the truth that the robotic age is now fast coming of age!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Rate It:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5