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Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher
- LinuxBender 3y agoNone of the "on a dog" designs make sense to me. Robot tanks have always been able to maneuver over tougher obstacles and much harder to knock over and are significantly faster. Some tanks with the tall tracks can right-side themselves. Stability is important with aimed weapons. A tank can have a turret with multiple projectile devices and could fire any direction. A dog would fall over firing sideways. So why do we keep using the dog form?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoSmaller, lighter, traverses rough terrain better. How will your mini tank deal with stairs or rubble? Rocket launchers also don't have recoil. Edit: Why would a robo dog necessarily fall over? They could take a wide stance and essentially become a tripod if they need stability.
- LinuxBender 3y agoWhy would a robo dog necessarily fall over? That's just what they do. Several Youtubers have fired guns off the robot dogs and even firing straight ahead can knock them over. Non autonomous tanks have navigated stairs just fine for the FBI and SWAT teams they do it all the time.
- pacifika 3y agoI think perhaps the dog is accepted as a human companion so it avoids the whole robocop scenario where we’re having autonomous robots gunning down humans.
- icegreentea2 3y ago"Robo doggo! Get in the house and get to the second floor and provide armed over watch out of the west facing windows!"
- garblegarble 3y agoI'm no expert, but aren't rocket launchers recoilless? As for why the dog form factor, I'm betting it'll be because a dog form factor makes for a much cheaper swarm than a tank form factor. Less mass to move about so a smaller power pack, too
- dmoy 3y agoSome rocket launchers are "recoilless". In particular, shoulder fired ones tend to be, so as to, you know, not knock people over. (LAW, AT4, etc)
- thinkmassive 3y ago> It's interesting to note that the Marines refer to the design tested last month as a "robotic goat" rather than the far more common robot dog description. Maybe four legs provides better all-terrain capabilities at lower parts cost than a treaded vehicle?
- darkclouds 3y ago[dead]
- lenkite 3y agoIt doesn't have a tail and carries a load. So "goat" is indeed the far better metaphor. Trust the marines to get it right.
- CSMastermind 3y agoI'd assume the "dog" designs have better movement in many terrains. Trying to drive through a forest, swamp, jungle, and plenty of other terrains is tricky to impossible while something with legs can easily go through it.
- mcpackieh 3y agoAn M72 is single use, so if the robot falls over after firing it that isn't the end of the world. It can probably right itself and get back on its feet, then return to base for another rocket. Still, I share your skepticism of these robot dogs. They seem like a solution looking for a problem.
- chatmasta 3y agoI'm not sure US marines need a "good reason" to strap a rocket launcher onto a robot dog, other than "because it's awesome."
- RecycledEle 3y agoDogs can jump on and over taller obstacles than can a similarly sized tank. The special forces ideal is small packages with large firepower. I can not imagine anything that better meets that definition than quadracopter scouts and robot dogs with missile launchers. Falling over after the shot is irrelevant. Basic marksmanship training teaches recruits to pull the trigger until the shot going off surprises them. We only care about what happens next if we want a quick follow up shot, which is not possible with single shot rocket launchers.
- reallymental 3y agoAs a human, this looks terrifying. Imagine being attacked by robot dogs. Now imagine being attacked by robot dogs that have rocket launchers! Straight out of a Fast & Furious movie. You can(!) make this shit up. But as a person in tech, where all my values are directed towards "making a better world"... this also goes against every ideal we have. Unless you count living in a world where we have the ability to exterminate a large amount of people without proportional retaliation as a "better world", in a non-nuclear way. We don't use biological weapons, so why use seeing robots with rockets on them? Oh yeah I forgot, we can't "catch a disease" from these robots, and they have a "limited" damage capability, unlike bio-warfare that can go out of hand and can poison lands. Coincidentally, the second point also means that we'll have to make a lot of them, and gosh darn it we'll have to build more factories and supply jobs to people. Wait a min... I'm really happy that less marines will be put in harms way when they try to launch missiles from their shoulders (also crazy if you think about it too much), but they did sign up for it, and they're not facing an army that can comprehend what's coming towards them. I've got competing opinions in my head, but one thing is for sure, autonomous warfare can either be a chess game that countries play (as a proxy for all the human lives), or the final game we'll play.
- garblegarble 3y agoYep, absolutely terrifying! There's always the old chestnut that if your country doesn't develop it, another country (or well-funded faction) with fewer scruples will, and if they think that their tech gives them a significant advantage over you, war is more likely (because they will have a much stronger belief they can win / win at a lower cost). That's also why we see slick video reveals of stealth bombers and missiles nowadays. The best weapon is one you never have to use in anger.
- dylan604 3y agoTo even think that robot dogs would "attack" you in the same sense a real dog would is the funniest thing to me. Of course a robot dog would use missiles, guns, lasers, chemical spray, etc.
- spacecadet 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 3y ago“Instead of having a Marine handle the weapon system, manipulate the safeties, we could put a remote trigger mechanism on it that allowed it to all be done remotely, If its remotely activated with the same control channel as the trigger, that seems like less of a "safety" and more of a "shooty".
- beambot 3y agoAtop a chinese-made Unitree dog? Huh. Did the DoD learn nothing from ceding drone supremacy to DJI?
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoI was thinking exactly the same thing. NSA's TAO has been modding routers since forever, and that's in a country with actual rights and stuff. Would not be surprised if every single one of these is going to have some undocumented functionality on an obscure encrypted band, like "kill nearest American soldier". EDIT or, worse, ping your location every X seconds on this band, and let us look at the audio/video when Y command is received.
- Sporktacular 3y agoHumanity is coming along nicely.
- 20after4 3y agoYou mean ending nicely.
- gwnywg 3y agoWhen I first saw Boston Dynamic's Atlas I thought "I wonder when will they fit a firearm to that". I was hoping my first thought was out of my cynism or bad sense of humour...
- perihelions 3y ago- "Designs based on tracked robots primarily designed for explosive ordnance disposal work have been and continue to be developed." And also for the exact opposite: the Ukrainian conflict sees similar tracked robots used to place landmines. https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17ax9mx/russians_watch_ukrainian_walle_laying_mines/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17ax9mx/russ... ("Russians watch Ukrainian WALL-E laying mines (subtitles)")
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kvonhorn 3y agoWon't be long now before we're reading a post about a robot dog with a suicide vest taking out a target softer than an armored vehicle. The article neglects to mention that shipping is $1000, according to the Unitree website.
- senectus1 3y agook thats cool.I was just playing with one of these last night. The owners were making behave like a playful puppy and holy hell was it agile and fun to play with. it sat up and begged, it jumped back and forth like a puppy that wants to play would do... it rolled over and flipped itself back onto its feet. amazing tech with a very short battery life.
- steve76 3y ago[dead]
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- iancmceachern 3y agoHard no on this
- wrp 3y agoSo, they strapped an M72 LAW on the back of a little robot dog. I can see a couple practical problems with getting anything like this configuration to work. One is that since the M72 is unguided, it takes fine targeting skill to make a hit from any distance. I doubt whether you can get that kind of control with a video feed mounted on a rickety platform. Another problem is agility of the robot. Armor in a well managed battlefield will have an infantry screen. That is why getting close enough for a kill is hard. To avoid getting shot by defending forces, the robot would need to race in, quickly changing direction, and pop up close enough for a kill. I've seen robot dogs going through their paces and they don't look nearly capable enough for this.