G.I. Robot, Robot MD, and iRobot - GI Robot
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GI Robot
Any self-respecting Nintendo 64 player has caused untold mayhem in Rareware’s Golden eye, including the stages with the robotic machine guns -- Jungle, Bunker and Aztec. Well, straight out of that comes South Korea’s armed and dangerous sentry robot. A stationary high tech killer with tracking, surveillance, voice authentication and firing abilities was unveiled in September by Lee Jae-Hoon, the Deputy Minister for Commerce, Industry and Energy.
The robot will support Korean ground troops along the 155-mile DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North and South Korea. The robot can spot objects up to four kilometers away, and, with infrared capabilities, can spot live objects at a distance of two kilometers at night. It uses edge detection techniques to differentiate between people and other objects such as vegetation and vehicles (although it can only say who is who at half its visual range). Combine all this with a machine gun that provides “suppressive fire,” military speak for keep your head down or lose it, and you have one mean gunslinger.
This shooter (T zero?) is supposed to roll out starting next year, and about a thousand of them should be snapped up at a cost of $200,000 USD each.
Why Robot grunts?
According to the Deputy Minister, “This robot will also help cope with the expected decrease in conscripts in the coming years.” The numbers speak for Korea. South Korea has half of the North’s 1.2 million soldiers, and this is expected to fall as a rich South experiences what all rich nations go through, a falling birth rate (isn’t it ironic?). All of this can’t be good news with the North currently undergoing sanctions, and a lot of saber rattling as well. The robot was developed by a wing of Samsung in collaboration with Korea University. Hmm, I wonder what the upgrades will look like. Mobile? Better sight? Interactive? Built for reconnaissance?
“I’ll be back.” -- Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2, Judgment Day.
Uncle Sam’s Med-Evac
G.I. Jane (or John) is down, hit with shrapnel from “Axis of Evil” types, who are pouring in suppressive fire. In 2006, two to five of G.I. Jane’s military buddies would have to risk their necks to carry her (or him) out of harm’s way. But, in a few months time, the REV (Robotic Extraction Vehicle) will trundle down and use its robotic arm to drag our brave G.I. into its armored bowels, where medics would then stabilize the patient’s condition before sending the G.I. to a field hospital.
The REV is a ten-foot, three-thousand-plus pound robot that carries stretchers and life support systems for saving lives. It is controlled remotely or by a driver inside the vehicle, but who watches the REV’s back?
My dog tags? I have no dog tags.
Meet G.I. combat experience in a two-foot-six-inch, tracked, and M249 toting package. Operated in Kuwait in 2003, this little robot does bomb disposal in Iraq and Afghanistan. Acronym: UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). Nickname: Talon, from its peace-loving days of picking up objects for the military bomb squad. Duties: hazardous, watching the backs of armored vehicles. Its area of operations is in Iraq, and when it dies, there isn’t any family to mourn it. Its arsenal includes six grenades, machine guns, and a quartet of rockets. The UGV has four cameras and a pair of night vision goggles and can roll for close to a mile in open desert.
We do not know what the guys in the research department of Foster Miller (Waltham, Massachusetts) or any other defense contractor, are working on next. Fortunately, the army has a stop button for our little monster. It is remote controlled and can be shut down and rebooted.
Soldiers of the Future
Pike, of www.globalsecurity.org, a security analyst, says these robots are the wave of things to come, of wars no longer between flesh and blood, but between oil and blood.
Next: Robot MD >>
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