News – Killer robots could become the weapon of choice for militants, a British expert said on Wednesday.
The way these things typically run, all the world's major administrations will expectably pump inordinate amounts of tax payers' money into developing these thingies - and amateurs as well as trained terrorists will find tons of lean and mean ways to either make them entirely useless or will even construct more primitive models that'll wreak more indiscriminate havoc at a mere fraction of the cost.
I want one of those killer bots for my home. It could vaporize the dust and grim and keep insects and varmints at bay. And pity the burgler who would attempt to break into my home.
But seriously, is this just the tip of another arms race? Machines that kill on a mission that their controller has programmed will not be able to distinguish friend from foe.
hizbollah has used at least one suspected "killer robot":
All the US smartbombs/missiles are essentially "killer robots" and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. The US is the biggest group of 'terrorists' in the world right now.
Sadly, Your right. The number of people killed in the name of the American conservative agenda, easily dwarfs by order of magnitudes all those killed by all the so called Islamist terrorist organiszations combined. You were "negged" on your comment because some people, mostly cons., are incapable of looking at situations from positions of objectivity, and are locked into their "us vs. them" mentality.
Unfortunately it is exactly this mentality which ends up killing so many. It is the "make them the 'other' strategy." Oddly enough it was used heavily in Nazi Germany with the Jews/Gypsies/Homosexuals. I can't see why people are so blinded by the fact their leaders are using the same strategy against the so called Islamist Terrorists (not to mention the Homosexuals again).
In a previous discussion, I mentioned the differences between progressives and conservatives (these are not political positions!). I mentioned that Conservatives have little or no perception of the non-linear aspect of the real world. They don't see that in an iterative world, that these patterns will always repeat themselves, given similar, or identical factors.
They don't see that in the real world, labels are irrelevant.
The action/dynamic is the only thing that matters. Remember, their's is a black or white,either or, Euclidean world.
"All the US smartbombs/missiles are essentially "killer robots" and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths."
Would you prefer we go back to carpet bombing of WW2?
I'd much prefer we not invade soverign nations on a pretense and then proceed to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents in that country while fighting the people of that country who we claim are "terrorists." I'm pretty sure if someone invaded the US, we'd fight back. Would that make *us* terrorists? I mean more so than the US Government already is?
Killer robots were used in WWII by us and the Nazis. They looked like small tanks with a high antenna on them, but it was not an antenna - it was a contact detonator. These were released as enemy tanks approached, were attracted to the metal of the tanks (by a magnetic detector), drove towards the tanks and exploded when they made contact with the tanks. Unfortunately they would also do the same to any allied tanks in the area and were discontinued.
Typical of the military industrial complex and the RAND corporation. The "robot gap" is being milked just like the phony "missile gap" of years ago, and the "race for space". All these lies were used to extort money from Congress and to frighten American civilians.
Just listen to these hypocrites, their lies betray them every time.
Actually the Troops are already doing it and bypassing the "military industrial complex"
Impressive for a bunch of guy Sen. Kerry thinks are idiots
Troops Build Their Own UAVs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/141423...
"So the troops have been improvising. Radio controlled (RC) cars and aircraft are readily available from hobby stores"
The high end RC trucks cost several hundred dollars, but can be controlled from as far away as 200 meters.
These are often carried by troops on convoy duty, for checking out items on, or alongside, the road that might be bombs.
Just shooting at these objects doesn't always set them off. But run an RC car up to it, and ram the object, and you quickly know if it is heavy (and possibly a bomb), or light (and likely just some garbage.)
But troops have gotten their own improvised UAVs into the air (and sometimes shot at as well.) The army calls these efforts "field expedients," and they are one reason why the army (and the other services as well) are scrambling to get official versions of this gear into the hands of the troops.
The government issue stuff is often little different than what the hobbyist troops are coming up with.
The military versions are more expensive because they have to be built so that any soldier can quickly figure out how to use them.
That takes a lot of effort, and runs the costs up.
But for units that have some RC hobbyists in the ranks, you can make your own, crude but effective, recon UAVs for under a thousand dollars. The official versions cost $20,000 or more.
Americanidiot:
"Typical of the military industrial complex and the RAND corporation. The "robot gap" is being milked just like the phony "missile gap" of years ago, and the "race for space". All these lies were used to extort money from Congress and to frighten American civilians."
Just listen to these hypocrites, their lies betray them every time.
If you have SUCH a problem with the "military industrial complex" why are you using the results of that "military industrial complex"
Your using a computer. Computers were developed for military fire control.
Your using the Internet. ARPANET (internet) IS a military "thing"
Do you use a cell phone? GPS for anything? A microwave oven?
How bout fiber optics? EFI in you car? Flying on jet aircraft?
Honestly you got a lot a dame gall to be calling anyone a "hypocrite"
Without the military and wars, it probably would have taken longer to develop these things and perhaps we wouldn't have some of them, but I'm not convinced we would be worse off as a result. Who knows, with all the money not spent on military, we could perhaps cure cancer now. It's hard to tell what would have happened if humanity had taken another turn.
My favorite science fiction stories tend to deal with that idea: what if?
So now I can't use a computer because I am hip to the lies of the Puppet Masters? Give me a break, grandpa. Nothing in the world could stop me from using any and all technology available, no matter what its source. You silly person, the guerilla warrior PREFERS to use the weapons of enemy soldiers.
I would never use GPS, and I am very careful of my cellphone, which sends out a GPS signal when it is turned ON or OFF.
Fiber optics were developed by the beings who crashed in AREA 15. I have no use for it.
And by the way, the modern internet is so far advanced beyond ARPANET. Ever see the movie "WAR GAMES"? that's what the military were using, big mainframes with limited capacity and a non-user-friendly format.
AHHHHH!!! Loooook out!!! Killer robots!!! AHHHHH!!!
Geez. There are so many ways to kill people that are so much less complicated that this is just part of the puzzle.
Choices, people, choices. Fear of killer robots, anthrax, terrorism of all kinds or hope to try and make a better world?
I guess fear sells more papers than hope.
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"The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle. Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy," Sharkey will tell a one-day conference organized by Britain's Royal United Services Institute on Wednesday."
"How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act? With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons."
(Cue theme from "The Terminator")
actually, hes not talking about something as intelligemt as a T2 or T3, lol.... the robots hes talking about are no smarter "than a washing machine"
My washing machine can wash 6 types of fabrics at over a dozen temperature combinations. And it can automatically choose the water level based on the size of the load.
If you ask me; we're in trouble.
My dryer is doing too good a job....it nearly burned my shorts.
Rebellion perhaps?
:o/
"It wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons."
Certainly not ones that are, in effect, small helicopter-like devices. These could be manufactured cheaply and be extremely deadly. The Soviets came up with poisons so strong a mere grain was enough to kill a man. Imagine a fleet of 5,000 sparrow sized helicopter robots equipped with poison darts and programmed to fire on any recognized human shape. It could be done today for a fraction of the cost of one stealth bomber.
The next step would be to miniaturize them to the size of mosquitoes, a brave new world of assassination awaits us.
Your theory assumes an endless supply of money. Only one group or nation has an endless supply of money, that being the US. OUrcurrency is not backed by silver or gold. It is backed by petro-dollars, which forces almost all nations to buy oil in dollars.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to poison our food and water?
Better yet, poison Budweiser and Coors.
Actually, my theory assumes that this fleet of tiny robots would be substantially cheaper to build than what we're already building so an endless supply of money wouldn't be required. And, they would be cheaper to build because we're already spending billions on individual aircraft. So, how many fist sized toy helicopters could you make for a billion dollars? Even assuming you were outfitting them with a kind of dart gun and face recognition software, I'm sure they would be a lot cheaper. And certainly cheaper than poisoning a country's or city's water or food supply which would necessitate an expensive cleanup when you moved in as a conquering army.
People hunting mini bots also leave infrastructure intact and non radioactive!
God, I can hear the salesmen now.
AmericanIdiot: "Wouldn't it be cheaper to poison our food and water?"
Yes, indeed, when it comes to killing others, the human imagination is limitless. I don't want to give any ideas to terrorists, but even I could come up with a few effective methods. However, why expand any efforts on finding new ways when there are tried and true methods, like the smallpox infected blankets given to Native tribes by the British.
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lo...
Sharkey said a small GPS-guided drone with autopilot could be made for about 250 pounds ($490).
This is true. The main thing needed is a cell phone with GPS, and camera.
This is much easier than you think. Program a R/C plan on a one way trip,a flying bxxb.
Here's a link on how to do it,Oh and they got a bunch of them.
http://diydrones.com/
GeoCrawler 2 (Cellphone autopilot)
Description: This platform was inspired by the realization that almost all the hardware you need for a functioning UAV is contained in the high-end cellphone in your pocket: GPS, camera, two-way long-distance wireless data communications, onboard computing and storage. Why do the tricky hardware integration when some cellphone maker has done it better themselves? By using a Windows Mobile phone, a UAV becomes a software, not a hardware, project. (You can see the phone strapped to the bottom of the plane in the image above; the sensor to the rear of it is for the FMA co-pilot.)
Features: Control the UAV (dynamic waypoints, camera commands, "come home", etc) by text message! Plane can return GPS-tagged imagery in real time by MMS (also stores it onboard for later downloading). Phone steers the rudder along GPS waypoint path, circling on command, and controls the throttle to maintain altitude. Separate FMA co-pilot stabilizer on the ailerons and elevator keeps the plane flying level.
* Airframe: Hobbico SuperStar (49" wingspan, $109)
* Autopilot: HP iPaq 6515 Window Mobile smartphone (GPS, 1.2 megapixel camera, discontinued but widely available for less than $200 on eBay.)
* Stabilization: FMA Direct FS8 Co-Pilot (infrared sensors, $115)
* Interface: Rentron serial-to-servo board ($77)
* iPaq to serial cable ($20)
* Custom software: VB.net code running on Windows
Mobile, using HP's GPS, Cameraphone and text message libraries. It's still a work in progress, but you can download a beta version that shows basic functionality, here. (Copy the CAB file to your iPaq and run it from the file manager to install the program. It requres the Rentron board and serial cable listed above to do anything useful.). The VB source code is here, so you can modify it for your own needs, including adapting it for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and other GPS-enabled WM phones. Documentation coming soon.
BTW does this help explain why the Feds go nuts when someone is buying a large quantity of cell phones?
STONERS: ""The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle."
Yes, that's the trouble with genies. They like freedom too much and have minds of their own.
Everybody stock up on robot insurance now... I'm going with Old Glory.
Old Glory Insurance, for when the metal ones come for you... and they will.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vi...