New Pentagon blueprint sees bigger role for robot warfare

[xchrom]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/28/new-pentagon-blueprint-sees-bigger-role-for-robot-warfare/




At a NASCAR racetrack in Miami earlier this month, teams from NASA, Google, and 14 other groups of engineering gurus put cutting-edge robots through some challenging paces.

The aim was to see how well the robots could tackle tasks that may sound simple, but are tricky for nonhumans – including, say, climbing a ladder, unscrewing a hose from a spigot, navigating over rubble, and steering a car.

The contest was dreamed up by the Pentagon’s futuristic experimentation arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and senior defense officials were watching it carefully – well aware that the Pentagon is growing increasingly reliant on robotics.

The Defense Department will become even more reliant on such devices in the decades to come. That’s the conclusion of a new blueprint quietly released by the Pentagon this week, which offers some telling clues about the future of unmanned systems – in other words, drones and robots.

[Octafish]

1. Easier for one guy to wage war that way.

No cumbersome chain of command. Just me and my joystick...

[NuclearDem]

2. Ah, so build robots that can wage war. Maybe hook them all up to a compu--

[MisterP]

3. I remember them doing this in '79...