When a robot looks around a battlefield, he said, the remote technician who is seeing through its eyes can take time to assess a scene without firing in haste at an innocent person. Dyer, a former vice admiral and the chief operating officer of iRobot, which makes robots that clear explosives as well as the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. “One of the great arguments for armed robots is they can fire second,” said Joseph W. The machines, viewed at a “Robotics Rodeo” last month at the Army’s training school here, not only protect soldiers, but also are never distracted, using an unblinking digital eye, or “persistent stare,” that automatically detects even the smallest motion.
Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.
Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. New robots - none of them particularly human-looking - are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.
War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots.Īnd while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. The robots are imported, Abdelrahman explained without giving the source, adding that everything in the restaurant is digital, including the 15 touch-screen tables with built-in menus.Ī team from the University of Mosul's department of mechatronics - integrating several fields of engineering as well as robotics - was in charge of programming and connected a network and server to the restaurant.FORT BENNING, Ga. The ceilings are speckled with glowing constellations.īut the star attractions remain the two androids, sporting a scarf and black beret, shuttling back and forth across the restaurant on rails to deliver orders.Īs they approach, smartphones come out and children promptly line up next to them for a souvenir snapshot.
Occupied by IS between 20, the northern metropolis of Mosul still bears the scars of war.īut at dinnertime, patrons of the restaurant that is packed every night can escape from the city on a voyage through space.Īn astronaut floating across the muralled wall sets the scene and views of Earth and other planets as seen from space give customers the sense of peering out through the portholes of a spaceship. "We saw the concept on social media in more than one restaurant," said Abdelrahman, a dentist by profession. The futuristic servers are the result of technology developed in the northern city, erstwhile stronghold of the Islamic State jihadist group. "I'm trying to bring these ideas here to Mosul."