US war robots in Iraq 'turned guns' on fleshy comrades

[YankeyMCC]

(snip)
Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.

(snip)

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Fahey said there had been chilling incidents in which the SWORDS* combat bot had swivelled round and apparently attempted to train its 5.56mm M249 light machine-gun on its human comrades.

"The gun started moving when it was not intended to move," he said.

Apparently, alert American troops managed to quell the traitorous would-be droid assassins before the inevitable orgy of mechanised slaughter began. Fahey didn't say just how, but conceivably the rogue robots may have been suppressed with help from more trustworthy airborne kill machines, or perhaps prototype electropulse zap bombs.

No humans were hurt, but it seems that the struggle was sufficiently terrifying that it may be some time before American troops are ready to fight alongside robots again.


(snip)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/us_war_robot_rebellion_iraq/

photo: http://gizmodo.com/378523/combat-robot-attempts-rebellion-against-human-masters-in-iraq-army-pulls-plug-for-10+20-years

[Juche]

1. Who'd a thunk it

You try to build a soulless killing machine and it turns on you.

[flamin lib]

2. That's odd. I thought those things were joy-stick controled. 'Course

it is a radio frequency controlling the device, so any radio interference might have caused the problem. Like having your garage door open when the local short wave operator cranks up his radio.

There's more RF out there than we can even count, some of it cosmic.

[Ian David]

4. What are the odds that the Iraqis have stolen a bunch of the controllers? n/t

[Ian David]

3. Maybe it was a fault in the AE-35 unit. n/t

[annabanana]

5. This should be in GD!

(and I'm adding it to Digg)

[tinrobot]

6. Maybe it's looking for Sarah Connor

n/t

[Nihil]

7. I seem to recall the South Africans having a similar problem ...

... except without the happy ending - several soldiers *were* killed
by the automatic gun platform ...

[bananas]

10. You're right - "Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 (South Africa)"

I forgot about this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2081952

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. Probably designed to auto-target on the human form

I read some time ago (Scientific American, I think) about how "face recognition" software grew out of a military program to have software recognize the human form. This software could be used to create war robots. "Friendly" targets would carry a coded transponder which would tell the robot not to shoot at the particular target.

It seems that there are still a few bugs to work out.

[Indenturedebtor]

9. Sigh our priorities are so messed up

We have Deathbots but no Lovebots... what gives man? :shrug:

I'll have one that looks like Angelina Jolie and one that looks like Lucy Liu please. ;)

[Hayabusa]

11. By Your Command...