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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 23 2019, @04:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the Atari-Battlezone-IRL dept.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/robo-tank-army-picks-contenders-for-robotic-combat-vehicle-competition/:

On October 18, the National Advanced Mobility Consortium—an organization of industry and academic researchers contracted by the US government to develop autonomous ground systems for the military—announced the selection of four companies to build prototype light robotic combat vehicles for the US Army. These are "non-developmental" prototypes, meaning they're based on existing technologies that could be turned into deployable systems with relatively minor modifications.

The Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light (RCV-L) program is part of the Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicle effort. It seeks to provide soldiers in mechanized infantry and armor units with robotic "wingmen" that extend their reach and effectiveness on the battlefield. The Army hopes to have prototypes of the RCV-L as well as a heavier vehicle (the Robotic Combat Vehicle-Medium) in full testing in 2020. Two of each design will be fielded as "platoons" for testing, with the goal of wide deployment of tankbots by 2028.

Working in concert with new crewed combat vehicles, the robotic vehicles would provide additional sensors and firepower to bring to bear on an enemy in the field. By using robots to make the "first contact" with an enemy, unit commanders would be given more time to make decisions before committing human soldiers to the fight—or at least, that's the doctrinal thinking behind the Army's robotic combat crew goals.

The four companies chosen to develop the first prototypes are HDT Global, Oshkosh Defense, QinetiQ, and Textron. Each has already fielded some combination of ground vehicle and robotic systems—some of which have already been evaluated in some form by the Army.

Tankbots seems like a good name for a dystopian sci-fi movie to me.


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  • (Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Thursday October 24 2019, @02:54AM

    by pdfernhout (5984) on Thursday October 24 2019, @02:54AM (#911092) Homepage

    https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Old-Guy-Cybertank-Adventure/dp/0985295627 [amazon.com]
    "In the distant future mankind creates sentient cybertanks patterned on the human brain to help fight their alien enemies. Then, inexplicably, the humans vanished. They just went away. All that is left of the human empire are the cybertanks who, in their own way, keep the human civilization alive. With an intelligence based on the human psyche, the cybertanks continue to defend human space, but also perform scientific research, create art, form committees and ponder the universe. These are the stories of one of the first cybertanks, known to his friends as “Old Guy.” He has outlived most of his peers, and has had a wealth of experiences over his long life, but he is starting to slowly become obsolete. Join him and his comrades Double-Wide, Whiffle-Bat, Smoking Hole, Mondocat, and Bob, as they live and love and fight alien enemies such as the deadly Fructoids, the Yllg, and the fiendish Amok."

    Written with humor by Timothy J Gawne, who did a post-doctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the NIH, and is now a professor doing research the nature of the neural code, and the physical basis of human thought.

    I've enjoyed the whole series and am hoping for another book some time soon...

    Meanwhile, see also my sig "The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people" because these planned Robo-Tanks are yet another example. We could use all this advanced technology and AI to make abundance for everyone on the planet instead of creating Robo-Tanks to essentially impose artificial scarcity everywhere and eventually force people to be like robot slaves.... And see also the Marshall Brain story, "Manna" which explores a related theme.

    --
    The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
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