Military Robots Research Articles

The dangers of military robots, the risks of online voting

The Communications Web site, http://cacm.acm.org, features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of Communications , we'll publish selected posts or excerpts. twitter Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/blogCACM http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm John Arquilla considers the evolution of defense drones, and why Duncan A. Buell thinks we are not ready for e-voting.

Implementing Autonomy in Military Robots: Technical and Legal ('Jus in Bello') Thresholds

While robots are still absent from our homes, they have started to spread over battlefields. However, the military robots of today are mostly remotely controlled platforms, with no real autonomy. This paper will disclose the obstacles in implementing autonomy for such systems, by answering a technical question: “What level of autonomy is needed in military robots and how and when might it be achieved?”, followed by a techno-legal one; “How to implement the rules of humanitarian law within autonomous fighting robots, in order to allow their legal deployment?”The first chapter scrutinizes the significance of autonomy in robots and the metrics used to quantify it, which were developed by the US Department of Defense.The second chapter focuses on the autonomy of ‘state-of-the-art’ robots (e.g.; Google’s self-driving car, DARPA’s projects, etc) for navigation, ISR or lethal missions. Based on public information, we will get a hint of the architectures, the functioning, the thresholds and technical limitations of such systems. The bottleneck to a higher autonomy of robots seems to be their poor ‘perceptive intelligence’. The last chapter looks to the requirements of humanitarian law (rules of ‘jus in bello’/rules of engagement) to the legal deployment of autonomous lethal robots on the battlefields. The legal and moral reasoning of human soldiers, complying with humanitarian law, is a complex cognitive process which must be emulated by autonomous robots that could make lethal decisions. However, autonomous completion of such ‘moral’ tasks by artificial agents is much more challenging than the autonomous implementation of other tasks, such as navigation, ISR or kinetic attacks. Given the limits of current Artificial Intelligence, it is highly unlikely that robots will acquire such 'moral' capabilities anytime soon. Therefore, for the time being, the autonomous weapon systems might be legally deployed, but only in very particular circumstances, where the requirements of humanitarian law happen to be irrelevant.

User-Centered Design of an Attitude Aware Controller for Ground Reconnaissance Robots

Warfighter safety can be significantly increased by offloading critical reconnaissance and surveillance missions to robotic assets. The subtleties of these tasks require significant operator involvement--usually carried out locally to the robot's deployment. Human soldiers use gestures to communicate movements and commands when engaged in this type of task. While considerable work has been done with robots visually observing humans to interpret their gestures, we propose a simpler, more field-appropriate system that allows robot operators to use their natural movements and gestures (via inertial measurement units [IMUs]) to teleoperate a robot while reducing the physical, as well as the cognitive, load on the soldier.This paper describes an operator control interface implemented on a smartphone, in contrast to the proprietary robot controllers typically used. The controller utilizes the device's IMUs, or attitude sensors, to bypass the touchscreen while accepting user input via gestures; this addresses a primary concern for gloved users in dirty environments where touchscreens lack reliability. We also propose that it provides a less visually-intense alternative for control, freeing up the soldier's cognitive load toward other functions.We present details of the attitude-based control software, as well as the design heuristics resulting from its iterative build-test-rebuild development. Additionally, results from a set of user studies are presented, showing that as a controller, this technique performs as well, or better than, other screen-based control systems, even when ignoring its advantages to gloved users. Twenty-five users were recruited to assess usability of these attitude-aware controls, testing their suitability for both driving and camera manipulation tasks. Participants drove a small tracked robot on an indoor course using the attitude-aware controller and a virtual [touchscreen] joystick, while metrics regarding performance, mental workload, and user satisfaction were collected. Results indicate that the tilt controller is preferred by 64% of users and performs equally as well, if not better to the alternative, on most performance metrics. These results support the development of a smartphone-based control option for military robotics, with a focus on more physical, attitude-based input methods that overcome deficiencies of current touch-based systems, namely lack of physical feedback, high attention demands, and unreliability in field environments.

The Analytical Review of the Condition of Heavy Class Military and Dual-Purpose Unmanned Ground Vehicle

The purpose of this article is the evaluation of the actual condition of heavy (weight more than 700 kg) military robotics and dual-purpose robotics in the world. The extensive review of the world market of heavy class military unmanned ground vehicle was made. All reviewed robots are used at present time or exist like prototypes. All robots were systematized by most important technical characteristics. In the closing of article the analysis of the reviewed heavy class dual purpose UGVs are presented. Based on the analysis the conclusion about actual condition of the heavy military robotics and dual-purpose robotics was made. Also the most promising ways and tendencies of development are representeds.

Military Robotics: Latest Trends and Spatial Grasp Solutions

A review of some latest achievements in the area of military robotics is given, with main demands to management of advanced unmanned systems formulated. The developed Spatial Grasp Technology, SGT, capable of satisfying these demands will be briefed. Directly operating with physical, virtual, and executive spaces, as well as their combinations, SGT uses high-level holistic mission scenarios that self-navigate and cover the whole systems in a super-virus mode. This brings top operations, data, decision logic, and overall command and control to the distributed resources at run time, providing flexibility, ubiquity, and capability of self-recovery in solving complex problems, especially those requiring quick reaction on unpredictable situations. Exemplary scenarios of tasking and managing robotic collectives at different conceptual levels in a special language will be presented. SGT can effectively support gradual transition to automated up to fully robotic systems under the unified command and control.

Robots Móviles con Orugas Historia, Modelado, Localización y Control

One of the most significant research field in mobile robotics deals with robots operating in off-road conditions (planetary rovers, agriculture robots, search and rescue operations, military robots, etc.). However, obtaining a successful result is not an easy task. One primary point is the locomotion system. In this case, tracks constitute a well-known approach and since the beginning of the 20th century this locomotion system has demonstrated remarkable results in manned vehicles. This article motivates and shows through physical experiments the goodness of tracked mobile robots in off-road conditions. Firstly, a historical perspective of tracked vehicles and tracked robots is addressed. Then, the main modelling aspects are introduced, in particular, the slip phenomenon. After that, several localization techniques are discussed with especial mention to visual odometry. The motion control aspect is also of primal importance. In this regard, several slip-compensation control strategies are analysed. Finally, the authors background obtained in this field is expounded.

한국과 미국의 국방로봇정책 비교

The purpose of this study was to find out the successful factors of the policy of military robot by analyzing the cases of the US and the ROK using the comparative historical analysis from the perspective of historical institutionalism. Additionally, this study was to figure out how these implications of case studies affect to develop the successful policy of military robot of the ROK in the future. This study focused on the period from 1898 to 2013. Historically, the US has developed and operated many kinds of military robots, but the ROK has developed and operated only a few kinds of military robots. Also, the US has acquired and exported many kinds of military robots that they have developed, but the ROK has acquired only a few kinds of military robots that the ROK has developed and has not exported the robots. The basic framework of the study has been established by setting out the influential factors from various theories of the policy of military robot. Generally, the first influential factor which has been identified was the development capability of military robots by robot developers, the second was the requirement plan and the verification capability of military robot by the army, the third was the countermeasure against the opposite public opinions to acquire and operate military robots, the fourth was the support of the government to acquire and export military robots that he has developed, the fifth was the law and regulation concerning military robot. This study has found that there were successful factors with complex interconnection. Built from these factors, the implications can be applied in the light of our task on the development of the policy of the military robot. In conclusion, the results of this study are as follows: Firstly, it is necessary for robot developers to develop military robots to satisfy military user``s need with more challenge and effort, before they ask the sufficient development cost of the government and the ROK Armed Forces. Instead of wasting time, efforts, and budgets by redundantly developing military robots, robot developers should also keep a close cooperation with one another to achieve win-win and endeavor to reduce the development period and cost. In addition, they need to find out not only the reason why the ROK Armed Forces and the UN are against the acquisition of domestic military robots but also the solutions for it and should prevent the military robot technology and secrets from being leaked overseas. Secondly, the ROK Armed Forces should let the robot developers know the requirement of the military robots and the user``s need as much as possible by forming the personnel and the organization responsible for the requirement plan of military robots. Furthermore, the ROK Armed Forces has to not only secure the budgets for performing the combat experiments designed suitably for the ROK military operation environment with a variety of domestic military robots but also make its personnel including the chief of staff promote the publicity campaign concerning the necessity of the robots. Moreover, the ROK Armed Forces should find out why the ROK Armed Forces and the UN object to the acquisition of the robots developed in Korea and set up the countermeasures against the opposite public opinions. Thirdly, the government should consistently set up the policies that ensure purchasing domestic military robots instead of foreign ones, while focusing a full support only on the military robots which passed the combat experiment. Moreover, the government should enacts related policies and promote the publicity campaign of these robots.

Moral Agency, Moral Responsibility, and Artifacts: What Existing Artifacts Fail to Achieve (and Why), and Why They, Nevertheless, Can (and Do!) Make Moral Claims upon Us

This paper follows directly from an earlier paper where we discussed the requirements for an artifact to be a moral agent and concluded that the artifactual question is ultimately a red herring. As before, we take moral agency to be that condition in which an agent can appropriately be held responsible for her actions and their consequences. We set a number of stringent conditions on moral agency. A moral agent must be embedded in a cultural and specifically moral context and embodied in a suitable physical form. It must be, in some substantive sense, alive. It must exhibit self-conscious awareness. It must exhibit sophisticated conceptual abilities, going well beyond what the likely majority of conceptual agents possess: not least that it must possess a well-developed moral space of reasons. Finally, it must be able to communicate its moral agency through some system of signs: A private moral world is not enough. After reviewing these conditions and pouring cold water on recent claims for having achieved minimal machine consciousness, we turn our attention to a number of existing and, in some cases, commonplace artifacts that lack moral agency yet nevertheless require one to take a moral stance toward them, as if they were moral agents. Finally, we address another class of agents raising a related set of issues: autonomous military robots.

Leveraging Features of Human—Technology Teams to Support Mental Models in Future Soldier—Robot Teams

The future vision of military robotics is one in which robots will serve as integrated members of Soldier—robot teams. Robots will possess capabilities that will transition their role from functional tools to working teammates. Because robots and Soldiers will be deployed in environments characterized by uncertainty, complexity, and violence, it is imperative that Soldiers have accurate mental models of what their robotic teammates can do, cannot do, and will likely do. In this paper, we present the conclusions of a review into metaphors for facilitating accurate mental models of robotic teammates. Emphasis was placed on investigating existing human—technology teams (i.e., human teaming with automated systems including autopilot in cockpits, driver assistance systems, and personal assistant applications among others) for features that can support accurate mental models for Soldiers in future Soldier—robot teams.

Negotiating autonomy and responsibility in military robots

Central to the ethical concerns raised by the prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots are issues of responsibility. In this paper we examine different conceptions of autonomy within the discourse on these robots to bring into focus what is at stake when it comes to the autonomous nature of military robots. We argue that due to the metaphorical use of the concept of autonomy, the autonomy of robots is often treated as a black box in discussions about autonomous military robots. When the black box is opened up and we see how autonomy is understood and `made' by those involved in the design and development of robots, the responsibility questions change significantly.

A brief thought on the future of global ethics: military robots and new food technologies

To deal with an uncertain future, global ethics as an academic endeavour might consider a common value we all share, such as sustainability, which acts as an all-encompassing term to indicate our future direction. Technologies of the near future that are currently in development hold problems and promise, and are clear subjects for the ethics of sustainability at a global level. Autonomous military combat robots, insects as food (entomophagy) and in vitro synthetically grown meat are significant cases. Such robots might in fact serve injustice and work against sustainability, and such novel food technologies may hold hope for promoting sustainability and global justice.

Tin Men: Ethics, Cybernetics and the Importance of Soul

The idea that overly emotional humans make poor ethical actors pervades the current literature on the ethical implications of the development of autonomous weapons systems. From this perspective, developing fully autonomous military robots should be doubly desirable: the technical process of ‘teaching’ robots ethics would finally systematize just war thinking, while robots could uphold the rules of engagement even under the most emotionally trying of situations. This article addresses my doubts about both claims. I argue that truly ethical behavior requires what classical just war theorists would have called soul, or what we might today term conscience – and that the flexibility of the traditional principles reflects this understanding. In pursuit of this argument, this article proceeds in two parts. First, it argues that the apparent ‘messiness’ of just war thought is actually morally useful. Second, it argues that emotions play an important and irreplaceable role in our ethical behavior, particularly as they help us mediate between incommensurable goods and intersecting ethical systems.

Military Robots and the Question of Responsibility

Most unmanned systems used in operations today are unarmed and mainly used for reconnaissance and mine clearing, yet the increase of the number of armed military robots is undeniable. The use of these robots raises some serious ethical questions. For instance: who can be held morally responsible in reason when a military robot is involved in an act of violence that would normally be described as a war crime? In this article, The authors critically assess the attribution of responsibility with respect to the deployment of both non-autonomous and non-learning autonomous lethal military robots. The authors will start by looking at the role of those with whom responsibility normally lies, the commanders. The authors argue that this is no different in the case of the above mentioned robots. After that, we will turn to those at the beginning and the end of the causal chain, respectively the manufacturers and designers, and the human operators who remotely control armed military robots from behind a computer screen.

A Model-based Framework for Predicting Performance in Self-adaptive Systems

In recent years, the Department of Defense (DoD) has sought to develop military systems with increasing levels of autonomy. There has been an increase in requirements and desired capabilities that call for the semi-autonomous or autonomous performance of tasks. Military robot systems are an example of such complex systems. As the DoD develops these complex systems it is evident, based on recent research, that in order to achieve the desired capabilities the systems must adapt and learn to improve their performance and become more autonomous. However, it is cost prohibitive and impractical to evaluate self- adaptive systems in all possible scenarios and environments. As a result, it is desirable to improve our ability to understand how autonomous systems will perform in order to influence military acquisition decisions. Prior work has sought to characterize the environment or the performance of unmanned systems based on levels of autonomy and suggested that environmental complexity is a strong predictor of performance of mobile robot systems. However performance measures of unmanned systems dealing with complex and changing environments have been difficult to measure quantitatively because it is difficult to delineate the general operational domains of the unmanned systems or how to determine if an unmanned system satisfies capability specifications or expectations. This paper describes the development of a model-based framework for predicting the performance of self-adaptive systems, specifically a navigation task for mobile military robot systems. By developing a quantitative model of performance based on the complexity of the environment, including slope and vegetation, we can estimate the performance of a system in new regions based on performance in known regions. Using simulation and data from prior experiments, we demonstrate the ability to predict the performance in environments that have not been tested. In order to validate our model, we compare the model results to data from previous DARPA-led research experiments.

확장된 깊이-우선 탐색 알고리듬을 적용한 다중표적 위치 좌표 추정 기법

이 논문에서는 장애물이 존재하는 환경에서 적외선 센서를 가진 다수의 감시 로봇이 획득한 정보를 융합하여 분산되어있는 표적의 위치 좌표를 추정하는 기법을 제안한다. 방위각(azimuth)과 표적을 대응시키는 방법으로는 장애물이 존재하지 않는 경우에서 제안되었던 깊이-우선(depth-first) 트리 탐색(tree search) 기법을 바탕으로, 우회경로 탐색, 중간 단계 탐색 종료, 하위 단계 부분 탐색, 결정기준 보완 등을 추가함으로써 트리 탐색을 확장한 새로운 기법을 제시하였다. 방위각과 표적이 대응된 후에는 하나의 표적을 가리키는 방위각들에 최소 제곱 오차(least square error) 알고리듬을 적용하여 최적 교점을 구함으로써 표적의 위치 좌표를 추정한다. 제안한 위치 추정 기법의 좌표 추정 성능과 복잡도를 모의실험으로 제시하고 분석한다. This paper proposes the location estimation techniques of distributed targets with the multi-sensor data perceived through IR sensors of the military robots in consideration of obstacles. In order to match up targets with measured azimuths, to add to the depth-first search (DFS) algorithms in free-obstacle environment, we suggest the expanded DFS (EDS) algorithm including bypass path search, partial path search, middle level ending, and the supplementation of decision metric. After matching up targets with azimuths, we estimate the coordinate of each target by obtaining the intersection point of the azimuths with the least square error (LSE) algorithm. The experimental results show the error rate of estimated location, mean number of calculating nodes, and mean distance between real coordinates and estimated coordinates of the proposed algorithms.

The Winter of the Robots by Kurtis Scaletta (review)

Reviewed by: The Winter of the Robots by Kurtis Scaletta Elizabeth Bush Scaletta, Kurtis. The Winter of the Robots. Knopf, 2013. 259p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-97110-5 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-307-93186-3 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97562-1 $10.99 R Gr. 4-7 Jim’s sick of playing wingman on his buddy Oliver’s robot science fair projects, so he eagerly accepts pretty classmate Rochelle’s invitation to work with her on otter observations instead. He discovers all too soon that Rocky is really after his access to the cameras his father sells in his home security business to better observe the [End Page 236] otters, but Jim nonetheless delivers and helps install the goods at the riverside junkyard, the site of the otter project. Things take a turn when classmate Dmitri steals the cameras, the cameras are then stolen by someone else, Dmitri goes missing, and the junkyard turns out be the burned out site of a government project on military robotics. The original project may have shut down, but some of the surviving abandoned robots have reprogrammed themselves with a mission to destroy, and it’s up to the kids to pool their robotics skills to take out the metal warriors and save the world, or at least their corner of North Minneapolis. Scaletta plays to middle-grade gearheads, delivering the expected epic junkyard battle between marauding monsters and savvy kids, but he crafts a solid mystery, involving the death of a local eccentric and some high end auto theft, that will also lure in the less technically inclined. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

What Is Robot Ethics? [TC Spotlight

Robot ethics is a growing interdisciplinary research effort roughly in the intersection of applied ethics and robotics with the aim of understanding the ethical implications and consequences of robotic technology. This article argues that the best approach to robot ethics addresses researchers, theorists, and scholars from areas as diverse as robotics, computer science, psychology, law, philosophy, and others. Many areas of robotics are impacted, especially those where robots interact with humans, ranging from elder care and medical robotics, to robots for various search and rescue missions, including military robots, to all kinds of service and entertainment robots. While military robots were initially a main focus of the discussion (e.g., whether and when autonomous robots should be allowed to use lethal force or to make those decisions autonomously, etc.), in recent years, the impact of other types of robots, in particular social robots, has become an increasingly important topic as well (see the various articles in [2]).

Bridging the Responsibility Gap in Automated Warfare

Sparrow (J Appl Philos 24:62–77, 2007) argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias (Ethics Inf Technol 6:175–183, 2004) has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another (in this case, artificial) agency.

Responsibility Practices and Unmanned Military Technologies

The prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots has raised concerns about the obfuscation of human responsibility. This papers argues that whether or not and to what extent human actors are and will be considered to be responsible for the behavior of robotic systems is and will be the outcome of ongoing negotiations between the various human actors involved. These negotiations are about what technologies should do and mean, but they are also about how responsibility should be interpreted and how it can be best assigned or ascribed. The notion of responsibility practices, as the paper shows, provides a conceptual tool to examine these negotiations as well as the interplay between technological development and the ascription of responsibility. To illustrate the dynamics of responsibility practices the paper explores how the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles has led to (re)negotiations about responsibility practices, focusing particularly on negotiations within the US Armed Forces.

다중로봇 협업감시 시스템에서 트리 탐색 기법을 활용한 다중표적 위치 좌표 추정

This paper proposes the location estimation techniques of distributed targets with the multi-sensor data perceived through IR sensors of the military robots. In order to match up targets with measured azimuths, we apply the maximum likelihood (ML), depth-first, and breadth-first tree search algorithms, in which we use the measured azimuths and the number of pixels on IR screen for pruning branches and selecting candidates. After matching up targets with azimuths, we estimate the coordinate of each target by obtaining the intersection point of the azimuths with the least square error (LSE) algorithm. The experimental results show the probability of missing target, mean of the number of calculating nodes, and mean error of the estimated coordinates of the proposed algorithms.