Robotic vehicles to replace human soliders one day?

3 robotic vehicles completed the 132 mile mojave desert race that was sponsored by the pentagon, with 2 million dollars being awarded to the winner. This was a monumental task considering the vehicles nagivated the course with no human commmand what so ever. They relied on sophisticated software to nagivate the sheer drops, obstacles and tunnels over the rugged course. The vehicles gave scientists hope that one day they wage battles without endangering human soldiers.



This is great news! Hopefully we will be able to replace soliders on the battlefield and save life's. It is also at the same time a little scary in the fact that this sounds like the begining of a terminator type scenario/

[edit on 8-10-2005 by Whompa1]

[edit on 10/15/05 by FredT]

These types of ideas always make me laugh.

The point of war has always, and will always be: Kill the enemy.

Robots fighting robots... there's still one great big fleshy weak link...

Robots fighting humans? As long as it's an inferior (aren't they all? ) enemy incapable of retaliating in kind. Sure, that'd work.

> btw... women nagivate. robots navigate.

[edit on 8-10-2005 by apc]

I frankly doubt that the submitter actually read the article.

The article states:

Of the 23 robots that competed Saturday, 15 vehicles failed to navigate the entire 132-mile course, but most still managed to beat Sandstorm's mileage last year.

The introductory paragraph says three completed the course.

The article notes:

The military currently has a small fleet of autonomous ground vehicles stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the machines are remotely controlled by a soldier who usually rides in the same convoy. The Pentagon wants to eliminate the human factor and use self-thinking robotic vehicles to ferry supplies in war zones. [empahsis mine]

The submitter concludes somehow that we are on the brink of a robot army supplanting grunts.

Here's a clue: Nothing will ever replace the grunt. There might be fewer and longer living grunts, but there will always be grunts.


[edit on 2005/10/9 by GradyPhilpott]

The human mind right now has nothing to fear from even the most advanced robots, they are just dumb as dirt when compared to even the least gifted grunt.

50-100 years from now that might not be the case 100-500 yrs robots could have billions or trillions of times of more brain power then any human.

But we ever make robots that smart I dont advise arming them or using them in any type of military role. They might just decided they dont want to take orders from a things dumber then they are.