SWORDS-military robots

[IronVulture]

For those of you with a copy of May 2005's popular science on hand, turn to pg 34 and be amazed by the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaisance Direct-action System.

For those of you not so fortunate, it's a remote control ground robot built for urban combat. It's very cool and if you get a chance to look at it, it looks like something a FIRST team with a boosted budget could build.

Has anyone else seen any combat robots in the news or anywhere else?

[rowe]

PopSci.com didn't have a picture of it so I googled it and found another article. Here it is. Enjoy

[Matt]

I think a first team could build this thing for less then $230,000.

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by Matt

I think a first team could build this thing for less then $230,000.

You have to remember the cost with R&D then weapons and testing, so I think a FIRST team could do cheaper and faster I don't think many mentors will want us to work with guns and grenade launchers. But it would be a cool project

[mpob]

Originally Posted by IronVulture

Has anyone else seen any combat robots in the news or anywhere else?

Like This:



http://www.metalstorm.com/cgi-bin/cm...uZFuVVpTQVHdWx


http://www.metalstorm.com





--Mike O'Brien

[Andy Brockway]

Check these out:

allen-vanguard

foster miller

[IronVulture]

the foster miller is SWORDS, but that metal storm 'bot is terrifying!

Originally posted by Kyle
a FIRST team could do cheaper and faster I don't think many mentors will want us to work with guns and grenade launchers. But it would be a cool project

You wouldn't neccessarily need to put weapons on it, just mountings and firing mechanisms, plus, unloaded weapons or scale model mock-ups would work just as well if you really needed them

[Richard Wallace]

FIRST robots communicate in an environment of gracious professionalism. Each robot is controlled by its own team or by the field supervisor because it communicates only on its assigned radio channel.

Our net linked computers communicate in an environment that also includes some ungracious amateurs and a few malicious professionals, but we continue to connect to the internet, participate in forums like CD, order things online, etc.

Military robots will communicate in an environment that is very likely to include technical experts with extremely malicious objectives that oppose those of the robots' operators. Working out ways to turn a killer robot against its operators could become a deadly serious software and comms competition.

Threat or opportunity?

[IronVulture]

Okay, officially a 'Richard for evil supervillain of the month' supporter.

But he also makes a good point, hacking could become a serious profession in a combat field that included these things. Um.. y'know, not that hackings not already serious...

PLEASE DON'T KILL MY COMPUTER MR. HACKER-GUY!!

But back to the serious, so far, the US is the only confirmed user of these puppies, so when some other contries catch on, d'ya think the government might try and hire some world class hackers? I read about some hacking convention in LA in popsci not too long ago