Navy to build Swarm of Semi-Autonomous Breeding Robots

reply to post by EvolEric


Pick any Sci-Fi 'bots out of control' themed series or movie and this is what it looks like.

Self replicating bots, probably very small in size, in the millions all swarming would effectively be unstoppable and may well lead to any of the nightmare Sci-Fi plots we've all seen or heard of;

Replicators - Stargate SG1.



They evolved into human form eventually, very difficult to kill off.

Screamers - Peter Weller 1995.

Type I;

Type II;


These too eveolved into human form.

Very nasty military weapons, out of control left overs from a planetary war..likes to kill using buzz saws or explosives.

Terminator.



No explaining needed, very smart, very tough, very hard to beat.

The Day the Earth Stood Still.



The grey smoke-like stuff isn't smoke, it is nanites. Tiny autonomous bots, 'using material from what it destroys to make copies of itself'. Sounds familiar to what the Navy say their bots will be able to do.

Others have this theme...Star Trek TNG among them.

Even without the fiction listed that has borrowed this theme, I'd be very careful about a programme of producing smart, semi-autonomous self replicating bots that can use pretty much what it can find to make copies of itself.