Researchers debate utility of autonomous armed robots.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Science and Technology

* When the Navy's John Canning sat down at a table full of Pentagon lawyers in 2003 to ask what possible legal roadblocks there might be to sending autonomous armed robots into combat, he was surprised when they told him that doing so would be problematic. Why? he asked.

"Because they could kill people," he was told bluntly.

Of course they could, he thought. War is hell after all. Enemies die in combat.

No, really, he asked. These were judge advocate general attorneys, but they were combat veterans. One was a Marine.

He asked again, but their answer was the same.

Armed aerial robots have plied the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is pressing ahead with development of ground robots that can roll down a street with a machine gun. But in these cases, there is a human in the decision-making loop.

Parallel work in research laboratories also continues on artificial intelligence, which would cut robots from their "tethers" and allow their operators to do other tasks. Sentry robots that can perform perimeter patrols without an operator constantly monitoring them are already in use.

Futurists see these efforts one day coming together. A robot soldier they say could conceivably move down a street and using advanced target and tracking systems, along with facial recognition software, spot a known terrorist and take him out.

Back in 2003, when Canning sat down with the lawyers, little of the legal, treaty and policy implications of moving down this path had been worked out.

"Legal issues must be addressed right up front. We're going to be wasting our time if we don't," said Canning, who is chief engineer at the platform integration division, engagement systems department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division.

There are other roadblocks--including skeptics who believe that the futurists may one day be right--but argue that spending precious research dollars on such high-minded concepts would be a waste of money.

One of them is David Bruemmer, technical director of unmanned ground vehicles at Idaho National Laboratory.

"I don't foresee any time in the near future an automated system being able to discriminate between a tall 14-year-old boy and a soldier," he said at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference.

Nevertheless, the military is at least thinking how and if it could be done, although Canning confessed that there has been little funding for autonomous armed robots so far.

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