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Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

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Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#41

Post by I_Am_Nous »

dylan604 wrote: post #16
reallymental wrote: post #5

As a human, this looks terrifying. Imagine being attacked by robot dogs. Now imagine being attacked by robot dogs that have rocket launchers! Straight out of a Fast & Furious movie. You can(!) make this shit up. But as a person in tech, where all my values are directed towards "making a better world"... this also goes against every ideal we have. Unless you count living in a world where we have the ability to extermi…

To even think that robot dogs would "attack" you in the same sense a real dog would is the funniest thing to me. Of course a robot dog would use missiles, guns, lasers, chemical spray, etc.

Reminds me of the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez (or its sequel, Freedom) where the automated, world controlling daemon uses robot drones with blinding lasers to semi-permanently incapacitate everyone in an area.

Pretty neat story :)

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#42

Post by I_Am_Nous »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
reallymental wrote: post #5

As a human, this looks terrifying. Imagine being attacked by robot dogs. Now imagine being attacked by robot dogs that have rocket launchers! Straight out of a Fast & Furious movie. You can(!) make this shit up. But as a person in tech, where all my values are directed towards "making a better world"... this also goes against every ideal we have. Unless you count living in a world where we have the ability to extermi…

> where we have the ability to exterminate a large amount of people Counterpoint: it’s an anti-tank rocket. Not a machine gun. (Obviously, they’ll also put a machine gun on it.)

Introducing the A10D Wardog with dual barrel M134 Miniguns

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#43

Post by jjtheblunt »

justinclift wrote: post #35
jjtheblunt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this also goes against every ideal we have Counterexample: https://www.wjcl.com/article/officers-kill-man-who-killed-a-... And there are countless other actual police dogs hurt or killed by violent offenders. Sending actual dogs in to snoop out bad guys, who then shoot the police dog, sadly happens. Send in a robot with a rocket launcher, the bad guy is like oh fuck this bad guy nonsense, and the robot dog just has…

> who then shoot the police dog What would you expect them to do? Play fetch with it?

I think, despite the humor fail, you have an accidental point, because the police dogs DO fetch unarmed hidden offenders.

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#44

Post by D-Coder »

Smoosh wrote: post #38
gwnywg wrote: post #15

When I first saw Boston Dynamic's Atlas I thought "I wonder when will they fit a firearm to that". I was hoping my first thought was out of my cynism or bad sense of humour...

A few more years of development and it will be capable of going out and getting its own weapons.

If the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to corporations, then surely the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to robots.

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#45

Post by MilStdJunkie »

beambot wrote: post #9

Atop a chinese-made Unitree dog? Huh. Did the DoD learn nothing from ceding drone supremacy to DJI?

I was thinking exactly the same thing. NSA's TAO has been modding routers since forever, and that's in a country with actual rights and stuff. Would not be surprised if every single one of these is going to have some undocumented functionality on an obscure encrypted band, like "kill nearest American soldier".

EDIT or, worse, ping your location every X seconds on this band, and let us look at the audio/video when Y command is received.

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#49

Post by lenkite »

thinkmassive wrote: post #11
LinuxBender wrote: post #2

None of the "on a dog" designs make sense to me. Robot tanks have always been able to maneuver over tougher obstacles and much harder to knock over and are significantly faster. Some tanks with the tall tracks can right-side themselves. Stability is important with aimed weapons. A tank can have a turret with multiple projectile devices and could fire any direction. A dog would fall over firing sideways. So why do we…

> It's interesting to note that the Marines refer to the design tested last month as a "robotic goat" rather than the far more common robot dog description. Maybe four legs provides better all-terrain capabilities at lower parts cost than a treaded vehicle?

It doesn't have a tail and carries a load. So "goat" is indeed the far better metaphor. Trust the marines to get it right.

Re: Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

#50

Post by wrp »

So, they strapped an M72 LAW on the back of a little robot dog. I can see a couple practical problems with getting anything like this configuration to work. One is that since the M72 is unguided, it takes fine targeting skill to make a hit from any distance. I doubt whether you can get that kind of control with a video feed mounted on a rickety platform.

Another problem is agility of the robot. Armor in a well managed battlefield will have an infantry screen. That is why getting close enough for a kill is hard. To avoid getting shot by defending forces, the robot would need to race in, quickly changing direction, and pop up close enough for a kill. I've seen robot dogs going through their paces and they don't look nearly capable enough for this.

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