Carnegie Mellon Gets $14.4M to Build Robo-Tank 213
coondoggie passed us a NetworkWorld article, this one discussing new developments in the state of robotic warfare. Carnegie Melon is now hard at work on a tank set to join its brother, the already much-discussed Unmanned Areal Vehicle, on the modern battlefield "Ultimately unmanned ground vehicles would be outfitted with anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles and anti-personnel weapons to make them lethal. Part of the new award budget is also slated to help the university prove that autonomous ground vehicles are feasible in future combat situations."
Is this what is called pork ? (Score:2)
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Re:Is this what is called pork ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe you should check out the NREC [cmu.edu].
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It depends on which political party you belong to and whether elections are coming up.
Re:Is this what is called pork ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, "unmanned" is a bit of a misnomer; as with unmanned aerial vehicles, I'm sure they will be remotely "manned" - people will still decide whether to pull the trigger (and probably do most of the driving, at first).
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I think this is not pork. In the long term, manpower is very expensive, and paying people to put their lives in danger is much more expensive than having tech-jocks sitting at consoles controlling remote vehicles.
Also, the cost of future tanks would be relatively less for similar performance if the tank did not have to safely carry a crew. They would weigh less, carry more armor, and be smaller. Smaller means easier to move around, and faster to deploy. Remote controlled means if a tank is killed, you
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The driverless car, which is meant to work in a cooperative environment (that is, cooperating with other driverless cars), seems like something that could actually be viable.
This tank, on the other hand, is a preposterous idea.
I will guarantee you that with US$10,000 worth of materials I can destroy any autonomous land vehicle creat
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Not "autonomous", but "remotely operated" (Score:2)
Nobody is making an "autonomous" vehicle, really. They will be operated remotely. Likely by more than one person too (the gunner, the driver, etc.)
As such they will only be harder to destroy than the current tanks are, and when they are hit, the "crew" will just switch to another one.
I wish, Israel had these last year — instead they were getting bogged down having to
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When I am learning how to blow up the vehicle, I will fail many times and then finally succeed once.
If, in that time, the vehicle's operator doesn't learn anything, or only "learns" in the shallow ways that AI does, then my job will be far easier.
If, on the other hand, the vehicle's operator is as smart as I am, he can drag out the process and make it very expensive for me. I might even be detected and neutralised before I succeed.
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pfft. face it, while you may invent the toys, it's the chinese that make them affordable.you NEED them to steal your idea's so that your own populace can actually afford them.
Last time I checked the production of the military and technology I was referring to was here in the US or in specially designated countries, not China! That is one of the reasons that certain technologies are not allowed to be exported to certain countries, if they are allowed to be exported at all. I would have much more sympath
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It's not pork because such money is not directly budgeted by Congress to go toward the specific research group or project.
Fighting World War Two with robots (Score:2)
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It seems that the Russians under Putin are becoming increasingly threatening to the West and to the USA in particular. There have been a number of incidents of late of Russia testing Western defenses, recently a number of Russian nuclear-capable bomber flights making incursions on NATO airspace and being intercepted by NATO fighters.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1280809,00.html [sky.com]
And here:
htt [washingtonpost.com]
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Since it won't be actually used but only for research, asking questions like "Can it be done?" "How effective is it?" "What can we gain by doing this?" "What are the disadvantages?", one doesn't want industry to do it. Industry is best when doing mass building o
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Robotic warriors don't bother me. Its those cloners that bother me. Robots are not able to respond and be creative in the way cloners can. Thats why the cloner army destroyed the CIS so fast.
[/humor]
InnerWeb
Areal? (Score:2)
Maybe these damn typos are intentional by submitters. It can't be that hard at all, seeing how lax the editors are.
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Besides, areal didn't really make sense, even for a tank, but on the other hand the military is known to bend the language on occasion.
Areal = Independent of reality? without reality? (Score:2)
Is this some kind or ultra stealth vehicle, influenced by the Hitchhikers Guide "Heart of Gold" spaceship? something which does and doesn't exist at the same time perhaps? wow, I knew you Americans were doing some crazy cutting edge stuff out in Area 51 but this is really something!
This Won't Work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This Won't Work (Score:4, Informative)
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Not if the tracked vehicle is from the large number of M60 tanks and M113 APCs in reserve. They are available free to fire depts for wildland firefighting conversions too, BTW.
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Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. They've had three "Challenges" now and they they still don't have a real autonomous vehicle. Just something that, on a good day, might finish a closed course.
So what they've done is actually kinda smart. They've had the Urban Challenge [wikipedia.org] and identified the most promising teams, and now they're funding the first prize winner to develop a "robo-tank". Best of both worlds.
Pe
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And they certainly didn't say "create an open forum for all kind of idiots to voice their opinions, and you'll get 14 million dollars".
On the other hand....you have a point. The current internet is probably a huge failure in the eyes of DARPA.....
Where's the full scale combat-ready Diesector? (Score:3, Insightful)
And when it comes bearing down on a pickup truck full of bad guys, it should have a camera in the jaws to capture that "kodak moment".
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We're using the US Army definition of "bad guy" which means "whoever was in the pickup truck", right?
Fixing your post for free (Score:2)
We're using anybody's definition of "bad guy" which means "whoever was in the pickup truck", right?
Try to grow up a bit and realize that human history has been full of "we just killed them, so they must be the baddies, else we wouldn't have killed them".
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So this is a justification?
See, the entire world had (and I do mean the past tense) such hopes that the "Great" Unites States was something better. But it's not.
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I used to think that way
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http://www.lilligren.com/Redneck/images/redneck_limo_4.jpg [lilligren.com]
LoB
Areal? (Score:2)
Fitting typo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares [wikipedia.org]
--
BMO
No, it's (Score:2)
Link to more objective article... (Score:2)
Ok (Score:5, Interesting)
In response to this : first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization. Requiring a human operator to directly control the machine from a safe distance away is the plan.
And second, a fleshy 20 year old is a bad way to hold ground. Robots have numerous advantages over humans. 1. Disposable. 2. Can take risks with a robot that a human wouldn't take. 3. Don't need supplies when not operating. Could deploy robots in hidden capsules located in the ground, using no fuel and minimal battery power. When something happens, months or years later, you activate the robot and guide it on it's mission. 4. A control center for an army of robots could have far more educated and experienced people manning it than the kind of people you can get to sign up for the Army and marines. Notably, you could have experienced translators, and input from high ranking officers.
Finally, robots mass produced should be cheaper than human soldiers.
Ultimately, the only thing holding this all back is technology. The KEY technology that made tele-operated robotic war-fighters impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s was that there was no way to get the kind of bandwidth needed over digital radios using un-jammable and unbreakable codes.
Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad.
As far as I know, the kind of radio hardware to do that was not possible before 2000, and using one time pad encryption means each bot would need to have many gigabytes of internal non-volatile storage. The tech wasn't possible in the past. It is today.
Sure, in the 1980s and 1990s there were demos of related technology, and people laughed at it and said it could never replace human beings. It can.
Note : I am in the US Army reserves as a medic.
Secondary effects (Score:5, Insightful)
I fear that all these technologies that take soldiers away from the battlefield, in combination with bringing the battlefield into cities, will result in lower barriers to entry for starting wars (because the military probably worries more about protecting its own than they do about collateral damage), but also higher (and underreported) civilian casualties. I worry that by distancing our soldiers from the battlefield, by making them safer, we might actually increase the human toll.
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That's actually quite backwards. Most people plant unmanned explosives. Suicide bombers are (as an exception) manned bombs--likewise, kamikazes are manned cruise missiles, devised by the Japanese when they couldn't develop a guidance system.
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When we go down the robotic warfare road we arrive at nano-warfare.
Though the army likes big beefy guys, smaller targets are better.
Next big war we'll have 18" crablike robots which walk on walls and have graphical camoflage, they do assasination style killings and wander through cities searching for heat sources.
The war after that the biggest problem will be making sure they don't go outside the combat zone.
This American administr
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Sociological and cultural research doesn't pay as well, and so there aren't as many people to lobby the gov't about it. We need find ways of
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The "human cost" isn't only about suffering, but about sheer numbers. If you replace the lo
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- An anti-magic activist in Larry Niven's short story "What Good is a Glass Dagger."
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Your "robot" needs a human to oversee it - a human who requires supplies whether or not the robot is "in combat".
Your "robot" cannot make decisions on the fly like a human can. Therefore all data gathered by the robot needs far greater resources to determine if something in front of it is or isn't a "threat" than a grunt would. We see this today with UA
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I wanted to add something to my last reply. I've noticed that, because I'm a programmer and whatnot, I tend to geek out about cool tech. I think the gov't does, too, and so it's easy to sell everyone, from higher-ups to civilians, on cool fast jets and all that stuff. And of course there are plenty of companies and college students with interests and incentives to research all that stuff.
There's less incentive to attempt social "weapons", and it's much less glamorous. As that recent Wired article poin
Systems that shoot back (Score:2)
first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization.
There's considerable interest in systems that shoot back, really fast. The U.S. Army has had counter-battery fire systems [fas.org] for decades, but they've been used against larger indirect-fire weapons. The Army would like to downsize this into a "use a gun, die within seconds" capability, something that could detect hostile gunfire and land indirect fire on the shooter faster
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I would hazard a guess that they would use other forms of encryption. If the communication is two way, then a key exchange protocol used to derive symmetric session keys would seem more useful, to my non-military eyes. If the communication is only o
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There's a way to efficiently generate the terrabytes of pure random data.
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Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad.
Radio spectrum being finite as it is, this is still (and will probably always be) basically impossible. You simply can't deliver high bandwidth to a large number of robots over radio. You need robots that use less bandwidth, and are therefore more autonomous, or you need a non-RF communication mechanism.
watch-robo-cop-for-cues-on-what-not-to-do (Score:2)
They're *called* "Bolos" (Score:2)
Illegal to deploy at home. (Score:2)
Predecessor Crusher is why we got this money (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason CMU got this funding is primarily due to the fact that we built Crusher (I'm a grad student at the Robotics Institute), for which some of this funding is directed to upgrade. Crusher is, hands-down, the biggest beast of a robot I've ever seen. It's a six wheeled, 6.5 ton, autonomous vehicle - this thing can drive up 4 foot (1.2 meter) steps, has 30 inches (76 cm) of suspension travel, and can carry 8000 lbs of payload. There isn't much that this thing can't handle.
If you have never seen Crusher in action, you've got to see it to believe it. There's a bunch of videos here: http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/projects/crusher/videos/index.htm [cmu.edu].
The quote in the original post is a little misleading - I don't really think NREC is going to be working on mounting weapons on the new vehicle. Primarily they're continuing development on autonomous mobility - can it properly plan and quickly execute a good route to get from point A to point B over rough terrain. Check out the CMU press release [cmu.edu] for a little more detail on the grant.
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So to summarize your point, "I don't make robots that will kill people. I'm just working on the early unarmed prototype of robots that will kill people!"
People can put your research to good or
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Who needs tanks anymore? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Here's why we need tanks [youtube.com].
The Big Question (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I think it will likely be the former.
This is news? I have two. (Score:3, Funny)
Morality (Score:5, Funny)
If only the U.S. had several, distinct militaries:
a) the Department of Defense (only functions in or near U.S. borders)
b) the Department of Securing Cheap Oil
c) the Department of Get Them Before They Get Us.
d) the Department of Team America, World Police.
Unfortunately, when researchers take DoD money, or soldiers enlist, they have no choice but to support all of a - d. Painful dilemma.
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a) the Department of Defense (only functions in or near U.S. borders)
Department of Homeland Security
b) the Department of Securing Cheap Oil
Department of Defense
c) the Department of Get Them Before They Get Us.
CIA
d) the Department of Team America, World Police.
FBI
Having trouble moderating parent... (Score:2)
If you get invited to this project, don't do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Its bound to happen anyway you say? You are bound to die someday too; but it doesn't have to be today.
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We should be so lucky to have enemies that agree with you.
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We should be so lucky to have enemies that agree with you.
This is a really stupid position. The 'enemy' will surely copy your technology. America built the bomb, and its 'enemies' had their own in a matter of months.
Moreover, it does not take into account the limitations of human group identificaton (the monkeysphere). Humans have a limited memory so they group people into archetypes. When they do this, they place some in the 'us' category, and
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That's far too simplistic a view and factually incorrect: the Russians did not build their first atom bomb in months. As it happens, the first successful Russian fission weapon was based upon the American Fatman device dropped on Japan, whose design the Russians acquired through espionage. Even with the advantage conferred by the stolen design, this First Lightning bomb wasn't test-
Obligatory (Score:2)
I remind them that the current administration might make excellent test subjects for the armored autonomous vehicle's weapons systems.
Devices like this will inevitably breed terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
Another thing that breeds terrorism is a sense of being wronged by a powerful oppressor, particularly when you're desparate and helpless. If your life isn't worth living, you're probably a lot more willing to give it up in the cause of revenge.
Devices like robotanks that COMPLETELY remove US soldiers from danger will have the inevitable side-effect of making our enemies immediately think: Here we are watching our families and friends getting killed by machines from the USA, but there are no enemy soldiers to fight. Maybe they're too cowardly. So... who are our enemies, really? These machines? Of course not... they're only tools, being operated by CIA agents and military contractors and the like somewhere else, probably over in the US. Hmm... could it be.... US... civilians?
The payback exacted by people who lose everything they have worth living for and are left only with such thoughts may be many years in coming, but it *will* be both horrible and inevitable. And of course we'll react accordingly when it does. It's bad enough when armies go at it in the name of 'accomplishing national objectives'. But once entire civilian populations learn to truly hate each other, war is no longer enough. At that point, only genocide will suffice.
Bad occupation breeds terrorism (Score:2)
I think you miss the point of this machine. Robotic tanks and tanks general are intended to be used in conventional warfare where you are facing an organized army, and where your objective is to destroy that enemy force. Tanks are more or less useless when you have won the war and you are policing the population, also known as occupation.
In occupation you are policing and controlling the population, or if you are into total war you continue war against civil population until they are submissive to the new
Re:Devices like this will inevitably breed terrori (Score:2)
The military are "just" following orders, and while they have a responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, ultimately with the way modern ar
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...especially if your technologically superior adversary had already chosen to ignore parts of the Geneva convention (oh, say, on torture). You don't even have to sacrifice the moral high ground.
not ready for deployment?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, the way I see it is these things NEVER will be ready until we just go ahead and build them to work out the kinks.
Take a look at WW2 and all the weapons which entered the battlefield which were totally unproven. Hell some were even only going to work in theory! The point is, you can not progress unless you put it out there.
Plus, I don't know how many of your fly RC planes, but I do a little and I can tell you...that stuff is not easy at all.
Ethical problems: continuous easy war (Score:5, Insightful)
The more efficient the methods, the more distant the human cost - all lead to more killing and more government control, not less. How much more war do we need? Maybe when all the "bad" people are killed then the "good" ones left can get around to creating peace. The direct fruits of this research are more effective killing machines, really useful only in killing other humans. There may be other upsides to autonomous vehicles, but that is not what DARPA is about.
When does the global population start to work together to create a world that is peaceful? Will it ever happen? Will it happen in our lifetime? Why are people not pushing THESE questions?
I don't want my grandkids living in a world with autonomous machines toting guns and killing people. That's completely absurd - yet here we are, building it! What we have now is bad enough.
The US has shown that no rules of law, no standards of ethics will hold up against the tyranny of powerful people willing to break them. Why would anyone want governments to wield even more power over people? Guess what - the right to form a militia and protect yourself against government aggression doesn't mean shit when the central authority uses unmanned tanks against you because you don't fall in line, pay your taxes, work your job, and stay in your place. Better pray to god^H^H^H er. . . the president that she lets you live the life you want. No person is going to falter, no one is going to ask, "hey does this make sense?" when the servo and an AI script decide when you are a threat because you shot at the machine.
Most of the discussion on this list is sickening to me. People here are talking about killing people like sweeping floors or serving coffee - completely abstracted from the horror that a real war would be. Just wait until the Chinese start making robots to sweep through the street, packing heat and rounding up US-ians for internment camps. Maybe THEN people will finally say, "Hey, maybe we should work on making peace instead of war!" All the while you're maching down to a camp.
Some of these questions I ask rhetorically, but I'm serious with the point. No more wars. We're had enough.
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Things are only going to get worse before they get better. GW wants to take out Iran next, so this kind of robotic weapons system will come in handy.
East and West are squaring up against each other and the bigots and Xenophobes on each side are falling for it. Muhammad the teddy bear?
I'm not looking forward to the last 30-40 years of my life.
Forget going back to the Moon and on to Mars, we'll all go up in smoke.
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Virtually everyone agrees with this point. Everyone is "working for peace", at least in public. But do you get peace by unilateral disarmament? Or by building better weapons than your likely opponents, so that the rational ones (at least) won't attack you?
As much as I hate war (and I grew up in an area where the scars of a lost war were very evident on both humans and material), I'll bet on better weapons to keep my family safe.
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http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html [edge.org]
(and all technology has nefarious applications)
Why don't we have these already? (Score:2)
It seems like it would be trivial to put together a small armored machine on treads with a machine gun and control it wirelessly from a secure location nearby. Since you could have such a device roll into situations that would be dangerous or suicidal to humans without hesitation, it seems like it would be pretty handy.
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Until someone digs a pit in the road, and your machine falls into it. Then they disassemble and reprogram it and send it back to your "secure location".
It is far faster and cheaper to inve
I for one (Score:2)
Raising the ante for computer security? (Score:2)
On the rare occassions that people have gone on the rampage with tanks and stuff, the results have been dramatic.
If I recall correctly, after one such tank theft incident, the local comander explained why it was so 'easy' to steal a tank, "If you're under attack, you don't want to be looking for the ignition keys". Fair point.
So, these fighting vehicles will have to be easy to use, to be useful. Lets hope that does not also make them e
Robotic tanks and aircraft ... (Score:2)
Okay, I'm confused. Are we Terran or Protoss?
Re:I For One Welcome... (Score:5, Funny)
War target? (Score:2)
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1) Lives are being lost.
Never a good thing, but our casualty rates are a joke compared to past wars. At the battle of Gettysburg, the Union alone suffered 23,000 casualties in three days. Iraq war? 3,879 (US) or 4,185 (total coalition) since March 2003.
2) Expensive.
Meh
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I, for one, would rather have our soldiers safe. Even if it means that third world dictators lose their power more often.
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There's a good reason why the US face so much hostility around the world.
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Looks like those of us who have already played at autonomous tank warfare are in the minority.
Long after I played O.G.R.E. I also enlisted as a 19E10.
If staying in had been my goal (instead of college) I would have had a great time in DESERT STORM.
Tanks for the memories.
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Cheers!
Strat