New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete

a reply to: baddmove

This technology basically makes the entire population of Ohio and Michigan obsolete.

a reply to: Osirisvset

No, it's Bosstown dynamics..

gotta admit, these guys are good with this stuff..

And now for something completely different....

The Japanese have this in a bag..



But I don't think us puny humans have anything to worry about..

Do you want Terminators? That's how you get Terminators.

originally posted by: KnoxMSP
I don't know why they would even go through the trouble of making it human shaped, or bipedal. I don't think the real drones to replace soldiers will look like that at all. It will be about utility.

So...spiderbots it is then. If that's the case, then I, for one....surrender

I mean, we're not THAT far off...

You want to know the cool thing about human flesh? It doesn't have this problem:

a reply to: dfnj2015

Don't tell them that.. they'll make themselves out of a non magnetic alloy, and .. eventually they'll use organic material to build themselves out of.

Where they will get the organic material? It's not soylent green we have to worry about, it's soylent chrome..

a reply to: baddmove

I say 5 years until the tech is that good.... 7 until it turns on us

I'm with ya there..

originally posted by: smkymcnugget420
a reply to: baddmove

I say 5 years until the tech is that good.... 7 until it turns on us

a reply to: baddmove

The rise of Skynet?

originally posted by: dogstar23

originally posted by: KnoxMSP
I don't know why they would even go through the trouble of making it human shaped, or bipedal. I don't think the real drones to replace soldiers will look like that at all. It will be about utility.

So...spiderbots it is then. If that's the case, then I, for one....surrender

That is actually a pretty good design to look at.

Also, they dont have to big to be lethal. So how about swarms of millions of killer nano spider bots?

a reply to: baddmove

I can't believe he put a gun in it's hand.

I remember when the machine gun was going to make war obsolete.

Well, I don't actually remember it, but I read about it.

originally posted by: Phage
I remember when the machine gun was going to make war obsolete.

Well, I don't actually remember it, but I read about it.

So you remember reading about it. Coffee up Phage!

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

No. Just no.

That's not how any of this works not even a little!

You act like all of what you said would somehow be easy, cheap, or even achievable at all with current technology.

It can't be.

You're breezily just waving off about 200 layers of technical complexity and development that would be required to build any such useless monstrosities as you describe.

On top of that, even assuming you could do it, they'd be trivially easy for even fairly poorly equipped modern infantry to destroy in droves for 1% or less of their build cost!

Throw in artillery, aerial assets, and AFV's and your Johnny 5 army would die trivially easy even to direct head on confrontation.

A smart opponent however would just kill the piss out of your absolutely absurd logistical tail which would be forced to operate essentially on the front lines of the battlefield. There'd be burning fuel trucks dead technicians and exploding ammo carriers as far as the eye could see!

P.s. if you think your "idea" would save even a single person worth of manpower or cost you're dead wrong. What you "proposed" would require support and sustainment crews of 4-40 men per greater than 5 million dollars a pop "robots".

They wouldn't defeat jack even if they were actually possible.

a reply to: roguetechie

Well, it was just a simple proposition.

Pretty sure anybody can come up with something better. But!

A whole squad of johnny 5s armored and weapons on board to the circuits, AI controlled or remote with air support. You can literally send them in any warzone with the sole intention of killing anything and everything that moves and blow up anything in there way.

And all that you said, air support would likely take care off. Or if not, you can even strap or make some missile launching bigger versions of johnny 5s. Or you can just strap on all kinds of arms to drones and let them mow down anything in there way.

I would not count out the robot army if I were you, especially if the robot army is going up against things that are made of meat. But I don't think we have had a real war, well since the last world war, everything after has just been more about bushiness practices then anything else.

But to discount the whole robots or drones or whatever on the battlefield of tomorrow. Is kind of like the first armys that went up against machine gun turrets still using the old musket load and fire tactics. Did not end well for them.

a reply to: baddmove

this is dewfinitely CGI as its BOSSTOWN they are good at cgi

however , if you want to check out the differences between Boston Dynamics , ATLAS robot and the one in the video
there isnt much difference at all really

check this

Edit , didnt see the replies above

ATLAS can now do gymnastic moves , all that is missing is the guns

hey im sure DARPA already have a military model from Boston

anyway how good would it be if we put the ATLAS robot on the mars mission

a reply to: gallop

I have been a fan of japanese robot wrestling for ages now

its the best I love their suplex moves and taunts

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

I'm not discounting drones at all, I just have a good understanding of what they're capable of currently, what it takes to keep them running, and the current challenges they face.

As an example, in the real world just within the past week or two there has been one contract signed for production and delivery of military UGV's and a second competition down select narrowing the field to 3 competitors for a second UGV development program.

The first contract was a 160'ish million dollar contract for delivery of an initial batch of 8 wheeled "mechanical mule" small cargo carrier UGV's. These mules are unarmed, can carry about a thousand pounds of gear etc, and weigh like 3500 pounds. They're not particularly fast or "smart" and they're still like $100,000 each. (They also represent about as good as you can get without serious bleeding edge expensive solutions)

The second contract down select was for a program known as RCV-L (robotic combat vehicle - light).

This is a program actually meant to eventually end up with a fieldable armed combat UGV. In this context "light" also means something that's probably gonna be no less than 3 tons And probably something substantially more than that!

As an example, one of the 3 entries that got selected for further development is the GDLS/Howe and Howe M5 which is essentially their old ripsaw high speed tracked vehicle now massively beefed up and including a pretty hefty turret designed for a pretty substantial main gun. No prices per unit were even hinted at when it comes to this program but it'd be foolish to think that each platform will be anywhere close to under a million dollars a pop.

The thing to note from all of this is anything resembling a viable military UGV right now needs to be about these sizes to be even remotely close to affordable / capable and useful. If you tried to make them any smaller their costs would spiral through the roof astonishingly quickly.

The other thing to note is they just aren't all that gee whiz capable, in fact they're just barely capable enough to start maybe being a useful tool that isn't more liability than asset.

UGV's are hard. In most ways multiple orders of magnitude harder than UAV's.