Military pushes for emergency robots as skeptics worry about lethal uses

[Jesus Malverde]

It’s 6-foot-2, with laser eyes and vise-grip hands. It can walk over a mess of jagged cinder blocks, cut a hole in a wall, even drive a car. And soon, Leo, Lockheed Martin’s humanoid robot, will move from the development lab to a boot camp for robots, where a platoon’s worth of the semiautonomous mechanical species will be tested to see if they can be all they can be.

Next month, the Pentagon is hosting a $3.5 million, international competition that will pit robot against robot in an obstacle course designed to test their physical prowess, agility, and even their awareness and cognition.

Galvanized by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power disaster in 2011, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — the Pentagon’s band of mad scientists that have developed the “artificial spleen,” bullets that can change course midair and the Internet — has invested nearly $100 million into developing robots that could head into disaster zones off limits to humans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ready-to-lend-a-hand-or-3-in-the-next-disaster/2015/05/16/2ea78a16-fa6c-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Disaster zones my ass.

Free speech zones, more like it.

So far TPTB have developed a bullet than can seek you out

Exacto is DARPA’s Self-Guided Bullet that Changes Direction Midflight to Seek Target.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22202/20141216/exacto-is-darpa-s-self-guided-bullet-that-changes-direction-mid-flight-to-seek-target-beware-bad-guys.htm

and a laser guided taser ( LIP-C). Laser-induced plasma channel
A laser-Induced plasma channel (LIPC) is formed by the following process:

A laser emits a laser beam into the air.
The laser beam rapidly heats and ionizes surrounding gases to form plasma.
The plasma forms an electrically conductive plasma channel.
Uses:
To kill or incapacitate a human target through electric shock.
To seriously damage, disable, or destroy any electric or electronic devices in the target.

More uses, see link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser

[FLPanhandle]

2. I think the technology is really cool

There are as many good uses for it as there are bad, but as a self confessed "tech geek", it's really cool.

[EX500rider]

3. The future is coming whether we like it or not..

...and it will be chock full of robots and drones and autonomous vehicles.