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The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

armytimes.com

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Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#31

Post by nicpottier »

jonbarker wrote: post #28

Little known fact: one of the first self driving cars was a 'Humvee' (real name HMMWV) which was equipped by DARPA with cameras and could navigate a road with no other vehicles, and go straight through a 4 way intersection after stopping (again, no other vehicles). This was in the mid 1990s. Would love a link to this project if anyone has it.

As I recall this was out of CMU. I also recall that they got smoked by Stanford in the actual Darpa challenges, which was slightly surprising given their head start.

I seem to recall Stanford used a far less intimidating VW SUV instead of a giant Humvee.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#32

Post by [deleted] »

arcbyte wrote: post #27
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #14

One step closer to the utopia dictators and despots have dreamed about for millennia. No longer will they have to depend on the loyalty of Praetorians or armies to protect them and put down the unruly peasant and proles. Soon they will have legions of obedient killer robots to ensure their rule.

Which is why we have the Second Amendment in the US and it is our right as citizens to have our own death robots. /seriousness

[deleted]

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#33

Post by btilly »

ardit33 wrote: post #6

Future of warfare is going to something more like Command And Conquer game, where operators will direct autonomous machine with a click of a mouse and warfare will be mostly done at a distance.... Probably with less casualties overall...

A bloodless war is unable to inflict the necessary pain to force people to change their minds. The actual military logic goes like this...

If the source of a country's military might is the ability of the civilian population to produce goods needed for the war effort, then the civilian population becomes a legitimate target.

The result of that logic in WW II was mass bombing campaigns which were capable of "dehousing" 100k+ people in a single night.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPnppCelvk0 for an hour long documentary on how our world came to accept such logic as reasonable.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#36

Post by yorwba »

bad_alloc wrote: post #19
djrogers wrote: post #7

This seems like an obvious step - why put a soldier or soldiers at risk to scout around the corner or breech a building when you can send in an armored quad? Or have I been reading too much SciFi?

Not only that. Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets shooting at me are hostile". That policy isn't any good for human soldiers but robots operating on that principle could avoid a lot of collateral damage.

> Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets shooting at me are hostile".

And those that shoot at allies. And those that haven't shot yet, but are aiming in the wrong direction. And those that are just reloading their mortar. And those that are setting up an explosive trap for the robot.

There are a lot of ways to be hostile that go beyond firing a weapon directly at the robot, and if it can't handle those, it will be exploited by humans pretending to be harmless.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#37

Post by maxxxxx »

option wrote: post #21

The enormously high cost of war (both economical and humanitarian) is the main reason why our time is the most peaceful in human history. Do not change that.

Totally agree. Once you have autonomous military invading other countries will be very attractive.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#38

Post by taheca »

option wrote: post #21

The enormously high cost of war (both economical and humanitarian) is the main reason why our time is the most peaceful in human history. Do not change that.

Those of us who grew up playing Civilization figured this out pretty quickly. War is fun, but is time consuming and costs enormous resources.

Much better to focus on science, and technology and grow peacefully.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#39

Post by taheca »

yorwba wrote: post #36
bad_alloc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that. Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets shooting at me are hostile". That policy isn't any good for human soldiers but robots operating on that principle could avoid a lot of collateral damage.

> Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets shooting at me are hostile". And those that shoot at allies. And those that haven't shot yet, but are aiming in the wrong direction. And those that are just reloading their mortar. And those that are setting up an explosive trap for the robot. There are a lot of ways to be hostile that go beyond firing a weapon directly at the robot, and if it can't handle…

Shhh... we are going to need to preserve our Guerilla methods dude.

Re: The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles

#40

Post by forapurpose »

This is far from being deployed, per another article on the same demo (a much better article, if you are interested in learning more):

Much of the technology is there to drive robotics and autonomy into maneuver formations, but when it comes to developing the tactics, techniques and procedures, the Army is figuring out “how we want to massage this,” said Robert Sadowski, robotics chief with the Army‘s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. “The next 10 to 15 years will help us figure out how we want to embed robotics and autonomous systems into the formation.”

http://www.defensenews.com/land/2017/08/25/us-army-tackles-t...

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