Army Yanks Robots Iraq Over "Control Issues"
Although other countries have deployed gun-toting robots and there's no shortage of companies trying to develop weaponized bots for Uncle Sam, it looks like the first test of actual killer robots in battle has ended in a whimper: the Army's TALON SWORD gunbots, are headed home, after being plagued with control issues. Yeah, that's right -- control issues. Apparently it was too hard to prevent the Army's gun-equipped robot from moving its gun "when it was not intended to move." Reassuring, no? The Army doesn't sound too enthused about another go-round, saying, "once you've done something that's really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again." Ouch. On the plus side, at least that's 20 more years before we're all put to work in the mines, no?
From Popular Mechanics





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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsgumbo koontzApr 11th 2008 6:13PM
Pentagon apparently is too proud to ask Tokyo for assistance with developing robotics for warmakings. Tokyo can build robots that can walk all on their own without any training wheels, yeah! They may be a tad slow for Pentagon's likings, but I am sure as heck that they will aim and fire where ordered to every time... Pentagon can have its own satellite killers and let Tokyo have robotics..
JohnApr 13th 2008 7:18AM
Holy Terminator Movie, Batman! Perhaps the gunbots simply didn't like being under the control of an inferior species...us. We need to be very careful about arming robots. There is enough sterilization of the killing of people already and enough ways to destroy life. Wars become much more likely if there are no body bags coming home. The fact that there ARE body bags is one of the few checks on our race to keep us from wiping each other completely out. War is absurd and useless enough without robots to conduct it for us.