US Army unveils Terminator T-1

[SirBruce]

http://216.26.163.62/2004/ss_military_08_16.html

No pictures, but I think it's based on this version of the PackBot:


Which doesn't look too far from Terminator 3's:


Bruce

[WayAbvPar]

Any word on whether it has a John Wayne fetish?

[Sky]

PackBot is manufactured by iRobot Corp.

Oh, the irony!

[Alluvian]

The pathetic robots being used these days just make me laugh.  I remember shortly after 9/11.  Some teens had made some moronic comments about bombs and such in a georgia restauraunt because people were staring at them.  The then head into florida and ran a few tollbooths setting off the authorities and connecting them to the stupid terrorism comments they made earlier in the day.  They shut down the entire highway, arrested and detained teh kids and then backed off the car and brought in the bomb squad.

Live 24 hour fucking news coverage of this here in Florida.  The bomb squad brings out their robot.  It slowly crawls towards the car.  Very very very slowly.  News covering this exciting event live from a helicopter.  Then the robot tips over.  The moronic newscasters didn't know what happened and wondered why it stopped (even though it was OBVIOUSLY a tipped robot).  The talked to their 'robot expert' who explained it had tipped over (classic what the fuck did you THINK happened look on his face).

The bomb squad runs out from behind their temporary blast shields and rights the robot.  It continues to creep towards the car.... and then just sits there.  It can't open the trunk of course.... um... bomb squad comes out and opens the trunk about half an hour later to find it pretty much empty.

Our robots we have currently in use are fucking pathetic.  They are embarassing.

[daveNYC]

DARPA's last autonomous vehicle race was similarly pathetic.  I don't think any of the vehicles made it more than a half mile from the start; and one of them was a modified Humvee, I mean really, put a brick on the gas and a rope on the wheel and you'd do better.

[HaemishM]

Osama Bin Laden, j00 haf been terminated.

[Sky]

Osama Bin Laden, j00 haf been terminated.

Bah, hold on. The damned thing flipped over again.

We need a weeblenator!

[SurfD]

Meh, just as long as none of the bots are controlled by a super computer with a name even remotely simialr to HAL, VIKI, Shodan, or Sky Net.

[geldonyetich]

They're all very laughable until they're pumping 30 pounds of munitions into your chest.

The army likes robots.  They're as loyal as you program them to be, they never disobey orders, they can (eventually) be cheaply manufactured and you never have to bother writing home when one gets blown to kingdom come on the field.   It's just a matter of time until they perfect the technology well enough that these things can think and fight on their own.

[Rodent]

Meh, just as long as none of the bots are controlled by a super computer with a name even remotely simialr to HAL, VIKI, Shodan, or Sky Net.

Shodan would be fine, atleast then we get to live on as genetic experiments and cyborgs. And if we're lucky we get to kill hackers/scriptkiddies. What could be better?

[plangent]

Some Battlebots were pretty tough.

e.g.,

[TripleDES]

On the other hand, look at them fucking japs and their humanoid robot thingies. It's just a matter of time to have these things be all terrain capable and moving faster. Then it's just all about remote control and/or AI.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

So the Japs have AZIMO. I'm not worried: we have Wil Smith.

[TripleDES]

Since Bad Boys 2, I'd be worried about Will Smith too, if I were in your place.

[Alluvian]

Robots soldiers are not loyal worth shit, what are you talking about?  All it takes is someone with the right frequency and codes and they can order them to do whatever they want.  Any captured robot soldier is a remarkably easily brainwashed soldier.  And a wave of soldiers that will fall down and cry for their mothers around any emp like burst is not exactly what I want to put my faith in.

Robot soldiers is a fucking terribly stupid idea.  At least for the entirety of the forseeable future.  Robot stealth recon maybe, but in that case the flying bots we already have are probably the better direction to build off of.

[Piperfan]

Meh, just as long as none of the bots are controlled by a super computer with a name even remotely simialr to HAL, VIKI, Shodan, or Sky Net.

Colossus?

bah! Kids.

[Sky]

All it takes is someone with the right frequency and codes and they can order them to do whatever they want.

A similar situation is what I thought of when I was watching Future Fighting Machines and they were talking about a new thread that the military wants to use that shines brightly when viewed at night with special goggles, so we could easily identify our boys in the field.

Well, that's great. Until someone gets a hold of a pair of those goggles, then we're pancaked.

[TripleDES]

All it takes is someone with the right frequency and codes and they can order them to do whatever they want.

Quantum teleportation.

They're able to link two particles together and transmit state changes from one particle to the other linked one instantly over whatever distance. That would allow information transfer without delay and securely, since you can't interfere or wiretap. While it's rather complex to set up something like this these days, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't be able to produce military "quantum network cables" around the time (50yrs or later, or maybe way more) they've developed robots that are able to keep balance on all sort of terrains and conditions, and move quickly and efficiently.

[Ironwood]

Here comes the science :

[Murgos]

Seems a bit extreme when you can just use a pretty good frequency hopping device and an decent encryption algorythm and have the same effect.

But quantum communication devices do sound much neater.

[daveNYC]

Zero ping.

[Alluvian]

Don't know much about the science behind this, but no distance limitations and true zero ping just seems too good to be true.

[daveNYC]

The current distance limitations are a bit of a problem.

[personman]

The width of the Danube is probably still smaller than the playfield of the average general.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3576594.stm

[TripleDES]

Distance is indeed a problem currently, but theoretically, it should be without limit. I don't know the details of the experiment and why they're running into a limit, but they're already thinking of quantum repeaters to get around this, which would apparently still keep it zero ping, since the state switches are instantly, even though they'd be chained up.

[Murgos]

I like that the article kept Alice and Bob as the examples used for the experiment.  They are something of a running joke in quantum physics (almost all explanations for the strange properties of quantum particles are done via Alice and Bob).

[personman]

Ah Brian Greene broke the joke in his book - he uses George and Gracie...

[Alluvian]

besides, those tests so far would require the robot to have a long chord leading back to your base.  Completely useless for military use.  If satellite works then you might have something as long as your robot never goes indoors or under clouds.

[Furiously]

I thought Dawn already had this technology nailed down....

[Bunk]

you weren't supposed to go there.

[SurfD]

No, Dawn was one step ahead of them, remember: negative ping.  Their patented time distortion technology allowed the servers to know what the client wanted to do BEFORE the client actually did it.

[daveNYC]

With quantum dynamics, anything can happen.

[Tairnyn]

It's all fun and games until Prime Intellect gets a hold of the this.

[penfold]

Its a remote control vehicle. Is it still a robot ? I thought it had to be autonomous to be one?

[SurfD]

Autonomous and "Remote Controll" dont nessicarily have to be mutually exclusive.

If you are thinking Remote Controll as in a remote controlled car, which can not function without someone behind the wheel/controller, then I see your point.

However, if the Remote Controll is someone giving an instruction to an autonomous bot from a distance, which the bot is then free to act on in whatever means it finds nessicary to complete the instruction, then i would still classify it as a robot.

Along the same question: You are Autonomous, yet you still do what your boss tells you to do when he yells an instruction across the room, do you not?  Is that considered a form of remote crontroll?