January 24, 2005
SWORDS ready for field deployment
It isn't exactly autonomous, rather it is a remote controlled ground vehicle. The army has put together the SWORDS program, which takes a Talon EOD remotely piloted vehicle, and places some weapons on board, and is deploying several of them into actual combat. Results from this will have implications for the future of the miliary.
Posted by elkaim at January 24, 2005 1:01 PMIt's easy to humanize the SWORDS (a tendency robotics researchers say is only human) as it moves out of the flashy lobby of an office building and into the cold with nary a shiver. Military officials like to compare the roughly three-foot-high robots favorably to human soldiers: They don't need to be trained, fed or clothed. They can be boxed up and warehoused between wars. They never complain. And there are no letters to write home if they meet their demise in battle.
But officials are quick to point out that these are not the autonomous killer robots of science fiction. A SWORDS robot shoots only when its human operator presses a button after identifying a target on video shot by the robot's cameras.
"The only difference is that his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile a way," said Bob Quinn, general manager of Talon robots for Foster-Miller Inc., the Waltham, Mass., company that makes the SWORDS. As one Marine fresh out of boot camp told Quinn upon seeing the robot: "This is my invisibility cloak."