Defense dept. forecasts greater use of robots in ground combat.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The Pentagon currently owns 6,000 robots--3,500 of which are deployed in combat zones. Most serve in military bomb-squads and explosive detection units.

That may seem like a lot of robots, but to officials who oversee robot technology development at the Defense Department, it is just the beginning. They believe that there is potential for thousands more robots to deploy alongside soldiers and Marines in maneuver-warfare roles such as reconnaissance and surveillance.

The military will continue to rely on robots for mine clearance and explosive detection, but the widespread growth of robots on the battlefield is "going to occur on the maneuver side," says Jeff Jaczkowski, deputy project manager at the Pentagon's robotic systems joint program office.

Commanders are asking for "persistent surveillance" and better "situational awareness," he says at a Washington, D.C., conference of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Surveillance and reconnaissance missions could be performed by other systems such as overhead drones. But Army officials see robots as filling a niche role--such as entering and inspecting buildings--that typically are only carried out by soldiers. Robots would stay on duty 24/7 and give soldiers protected cover in potentially dangerous situations.

Once infantry teams gain an appreciation of what robots can do, the demand will grow, says Jaczkowski.

But the Defense Department has yet to clear several technical and bureaucratic hurdles before infantry robots that meet soldiers' needs are produced in large numbers.

Units that are soon heading to Afghanistan have requested reconnaissance robots, but they need to be much lighter and smaller than current systems, says Jaczkowski, because they have to be transported by helicopter or by infantry units on foot. "If infantry soldiers and Marines are packing a robot, it has to be light and agile," he says.

The Army is developing five new types of robots under the Future Combat Systems program. But the one robot that is intended for urban reconnaissance--the small unmanned ground vehicle--weighs 32 pounds.

"We need to bring it down," says William Daniel Folk, deputy product manager for FCS unmanned ground vehicles. Engineers are looking to trim the weight by downsizing the cooling equipment that the robot requires to keep its computers from overheating.

The Army claims that one SUGV can be packed into a standard "molle" rucksack.

Jaczkowski says that for many soldiers...