Pentagon plans for robotic force by ’20

Washington, Aug. 5: Pentagon is planning to replace by 2020 some 30 per cent of its soldiery with robots, which are quietly transiting from the realm of science fiction to the actual battlefield.

Robots are increasingly taking over from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, there are unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots for explosives detection. A report by Erin Fults quoted Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University, who are leading this cutting edge innovation, as saying that machines still need the human touch. The Pentagon’s robotic force is operated by someone from a remote location, possibly with a joystick and a computer screen. While this may seem like a caveat in plans to add robots to the military, it is actually very important to keep humans involved in the robotic operations.

"When the military says ‘robot’ they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots," said Mr Smart, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

Robotics advancements do, however, raise new ethical questions, such as where to place the blame if a robot kills someone. Nevertheless, as the technology progresses, more robots are being sent into battle first.

"It’s a chain of command thing. You don’t want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You want to have a human hit the button," said Mr Smart. "You don’t want the robot to make the wrong decision. You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions."

While movies display robots as intelligent beings, Mr Smart and Mr Few aren’t necessarily looking for intelligent decision-making in their robots. Instead, they are working to develop an improved, "intelligent" functioning of the robot.

"It’s oftentimes like the difference between the adverb and noun. You can act intelligently or you can be intelligent. I’m much more interested in the adverb for my robots," said Mr Few. —IANS