Robots in Battlefield

Smart military robots controlled by humans are currently deployed in Pakistan to combat Taliban. Some like QinetiQ’s MAARS are armed with weapons to shoot insurgents, appendages to disarm bombs and surveillance equipment to search buildings. No matter where the robots are deployed, however there is always a human involved in directing where a robot should fly and what munitions the robot should use if it encounters resistance.

What if humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to decide who to kill or what to bomb on their own? Ronald Arkin, a Georgia tech computer science professor is developing a a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire.

He tells these robots take decision wiser than humans in the battlefield. Also behaves more ethically than human.