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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 3102120" data-attributes="member: 5868">That would be the <a href="http://usmilitary.about.com/od/weapons/a/armedrobots.htm" target="_blank">SWORDS</a> robot, developed by the local mad scientists of the Armaments Research Development & Engineering Command here at Picatinny Arsenal.Neat stuff, but in my personal and professional (military/engineering) opinion, armed robots are a long way from prime time.  There are just too many issues associated with clearance of fire, positive ID, confirmation of safety status, spoofing/jamming/hacking, and so on to work out -- though we'll eventually work through all of those items with enough study(hopefully by about 2012, when the armed robots that are part of the Army's <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/fcs-ugv.htm" target="_blank">Future Combat Systems</a> are supposed to be fielded).I was personally involved in a minor mishap with a SWORDS.  I was at a live fire SWORDS demonstration at an NDIA convention in Albuquerque this year.  I standing back in the crowd, waitig for the robot to move into my field of view, when the people infront of me started backing up.  I assumed they were moving to get a better view -- until they started running.  Turns out the crew had lost control of SWORDS; it wasn't responding to commands and was traversing on to the crowd.  Luckily the manual safety on the weapon was still engaged, or the robot could very easily have mown down a bunch of folks -- the weapon was locked & loaded with a full box of ammunition.  No harm done in the end (minus a few folks who got dirty diving for cover), but the SWORDS did get pulled from the range.  I never did hear what the bug was.</blockquote>

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