The Robot Army's High Price Tag.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: UP FRONT

Paul Rogers, director of the Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, sounded a warning aimed at the true believers at a recent Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference: software maintenance costs could eat alive ground robot budgets.

"Affordability will kill ground vehicle costs if we are not careful," he said.

"Software sustainment is going to be our Achilles' heel," he said. These are software-enabled platforms and will require continuous expensive upgrades. Proprietary sole-sourced solutions will be unaffordable and will prevent the...