After the First Robot Rodeo, What Next?
More machines are geared up to take the bullet for the human soldier. But will they all be allowed to perform that task soon?
That question was undoubtedly raised in the participants’ minds after big and small companies showcased their robots in Fort Hood’s first Robot Rodeo. The idea of holding such an event was concocted by Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, Fort Hood’s commander and a graduate of MIT.
Rick Lynch lost 135 soldiers in Task Force Marne. This has strengthened his resolve to push the deployment of more unmanned systems into the battlefield. In a letter to his men, he shared that those 135 soldiers “died on a place on the battlefield that I put them, and I have to live with that every day for the rest of my life. If I had robot technology available to me then, many of those young men and women would be alive today.”
The Robot Rodeo is just one of the steps Lynch plans to take to campaign for his advocacy.
One of his biggest qualms is the snail-paced reaction of the Army in implementing these technologies on the battlefield. By the time they’re released for battle, new and much better technologies would have already emerged.
Those in the Army who are open to the idea of deploying robots, including Lynch, are sure of what they want though: autonomous machines. Right now, robots currently being used in the Army, like iRobot’s PackBot, or even those that are groomed to replace it, like the Eyedrive, are still operated by human soldiers.
Their argument to the current setup makes sense: Even if the operator can stay away at a relatively safe distance, no place is totally safe in the battlefield. Hence, since the operator will have to be focused on the remote, he won’t be able to watch his back. Meaning, an additional human will have to do that for him. The end result? More lives will be at risk.
Robots that can operate on their own is obviously the solution… but then, you know why some people up there don’t want to go into that.
