Ukraine is set to field its first officially codified domestically built grenade launcher armed ground robot, after the Ministry of Defense approved the Droid NW 40 robotic combat system for service with the country’s Defense Forces, developer DevDroid said on December 23.
Thank you. I’m pro Ukraine, and terrified of robot armies. It’s great that they are being made to fight Russia, but is that the only use this technology will ever be put to? I mean, we are already looking down the barrel of weaponized drone warfare. Basically, war sucks and fuck Putin.
The primary use of unmanned ground vehicles are for logistics especially logistics with explodey things it is very dangerous to ask a human to carry through a battlefield. If a UGV carrying a bunch of mortar rounds is hit by an FPV drone that sucks for the mortar crew that doesn’t get ammunition but it is unimaginably better than a human being driving a truck full of mortar rounds being hit by one.
The next most useful use of unmanned ground vehicles are for casualty evacuation under fire and under conditions too risky for humans to try.
The third most useful is as a weapon.
So yes this is scary but honestly a human with a gun is still far more terrifying. The broader future of these big derpy rolling ground robots are disaster response and lifesaving applications, they are useful for war too but under very specific human coordinated contexts.
You just know that Trump is salivating to deploy something like this against ANTIFA. It’ll be allowed to go into fully autonomous mode as it is modified to shoot “non-lethal” (yes I know thats not the right term but thats what they will say) rounds as it deems fit by their specially trained AI to basically shoot anything moving that isn’t ICE.