What do you do with a robot armed with a million-round-per-minute gun? "Crowd control," naturally. For several months, Metal Storm, the troubled electronic gun developer, has been working with iRobot -- the makers of military machines and cute, semi-autonomous vacuum cleaners -- to arm some of their new, 250-pound unmanned ground vehicles. Last week, at a defense trade show, the two firms showed off the results of their joint venture. Metal Storm's weapons fire bullets electronically, instead of with firing pins and primer. The ammunition is stacked, rather than mechanically reloaded. And the only moving parts in the weapon are the ammunition itself. Which means the weapon can fire at a rate of thousands of rounds per minute -- maybe even up to a million, theoretically. Metal Storm's 40mm weapons mount, the company tells us, can deliver both high-explosive and less-lethal rounds. Which makes it perfect for everything from urban assaults to "border patrol" to "infrastructure protection" to "crowd control." Ordinarily, iRobot's military bots have been used to look out for terrorists and their improvised bombs. But, in the last year, the company has made a push into armed robotics, signing deals with stun-gun maker Taser and with Metal Storm. Its rival, Foster-Miller, has already tried out its machines with Metal Storm weapons, and has three machine gun-toting 'bots in Iraq. Because of safety concerns, however, they're not seeing much action. Not even crowd control. By: Noah Shachtman, May 27, 2008 Do you think this robot suits the military? And what sorts of robots would you want to see in the military? Do you prefer robots in the military?
Sorry to spoil the mood, but the robot reminds me of Wall-e... =_=b And no, I don't think wars should be fought, with or without robots, period.
I think I remember the US Army pulled the plug on something similar to this, after it accidentally shot at them. Would be reasonably ideal for a riot, where law enforcement officers may be in danger, and use the robot to spray something at rioters
And.. Give you better run away straight away.. Cause you're gonna get hit.. And its gonna hurt, especially at 1 million rounds of less lethal/lethal a minute..
