Attempting to give an overview of what robotics can do in present-day conflicts and not in future combat, explaining the technological difficulties to be overcome and examining the question of autonomous decision-making by robots, this article will concentrate on robotic systems operating in the air-land environment, that is to say on the ground or very close to it. It therefore excludes marine robots and unmanned aerial vehicles which need to be coordinated in use with other flying machines.
Will there be a War of the Robots?
January 1991. The first Gulf War. Necessity becomes paramount: the need for combat forces to advance across potentially mined terrain, and the refusal to put human lives in danger provides the first shock. It will give birth to one of the first remote-controlled vehicles seen on the battlefield. This meeting between operational requirement and technical solution is without doubt the starting point of military robotics. Land forces, from this time on, began to be equipped with robotic machines.
The characteristics of these robotic systems distinguish them from other complex systems. In the first place, they possess sensors and computer software which allow them to be either remotely controlled or to be given autonomous action without remote control. Moreover, if they are neither destroyed nor neutralised by the enemy they are recoverable, whether or not their mission has been accomplished, possibly with human help. The robot is thus a complex machine that differs from munitions, and is not a consumable equipment, even though it has a significant attrition rate. Missiles, torpedoes and mines are not therefore robots.
It is necessary to evaluate the advantages which robotics, far from the fantasy of the autonomous, multidisciplinary robot of advanced design, can give to land forces with respect to its problems, both human and technological.
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