Bots on The Ground - washingtonpost.comWe do tend to anthropomorphize hardware, don't we?The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.
This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.
Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.
The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.
The colonel ordered the test stopped.
Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?
The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.
This test, he charged, was inhumane.
So it was, so it is, so it will be. It says a good bit about our humanity that we'd imply feelings in inanimate objects and care about them - and it says something else that we'd be so quick to deny feelings in others and find ways to demonize them when they don't look like us or believe like us.
So it was, so it is... and so it will be. Maybe someday we'll learn to respect the other the way we respect our machines.
J.
Comments (5)
Have you ever heard of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots (www.aspcr.com)? Their motto is, "Robots are people too, or they will be someday." They really exist, and have since 1999, but what they are talking about is sentient artificial entities, not remotly controlled devices, so this sort of thing is not their concern.
Posted by John C. | May 7, 2007 5:54 AM
Posted on May 7, 2007 05:54
That was the best article to wake up to this morning!
Soon, very soon, we can expect Bolos and have tanks that will talk about music and culture and be the damned fiercest defenders of humans ever *because* they understand music and culture and its value and have dedication to those that can create same.
Unlike, sadly, many humans.
Posted by ajacksonian | May 7, 2007 11:04 AM
Posted on May 7, 2007 11:04
I'm not sure we're going to see humongo Bolos, AJacksonian, simply because we don't have anti-gravity yet and the limiting factor on military hardware size is the ability to actually GET it to where it's needed. A C-5 can carry a pair of M-1A tanks, but that's about it.
So Laumer's megaton-sized gentle giants will have to wait a while longer.
J.
Posted by JLawson | May 8, 2007 8:33 PM
Posted on May 8, 2007 20:33
John -
Every so often when commericals come on featuring talking appliances or the like, I often remark to She who must be amused that if anything like that ever started talking to me spontaneously, I'd beat it to death with a stick.
I may have to rethink that someday.
J.
Posted by JLawson | May 8, 2007 8:35 PM
Posted on May 8, 2007 20:35
We can, at least, get the much more size amenable Mark I-III series started! Now those later series... yes, decades if not centuries, so time to start the tradition off on a good foot.
Those early Mark I-III series, actually, are within the 20 year time-frame and we can expect something like them sooner or later at this point. Get those a whole lot faster than the GEV tanks from Hammer's Slammers, thats for sure.
Posted by ajacksonian | May 9, 2007 10:45 AM
Posted on May 9, 2007 10:45