Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq 263
NightFalcon90909 writes "You may have heard that armed robots were yanked from Iraq after a gun started to swivel without it being told to do so. 'A recent news report that armed robots had been pulled out of Iraq is mistaken, according to the company that makes the robot [Foster-Miller] and the Army program manager. 'The whole thing is an urban legend,' says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command.'"
It's Inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)
EX-TER-MI-NATE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Government Said So... (Score:0, Interesting)
Never Say Never (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be more concerned if it never failed (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not exactly sure what it means to "double solder" something. But obviously double soldering and redundant wiring add design and material costs. They must have guessed they didn't need the redundancy but, diligently they ran the test and it failed. So, now the robot has redundancy. This is how product validation works. If your products never fails during validation you're probably over-engineering them (meaning a simpler/cheaper product probably could be made that meets the requirements). However, when your products fail it is your job to fix the design and rerun the test. This is apparently what happened. I don't see how any of this is news.
Re:It's Inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in the industry and have yet to see any robot which never moves when it's not supposed to. Robotic control is a non-trivial problem and though I don't doubt the abilities of the engineers at Foster-Miller, I have not yet seen any robotic platform I would trust implicitly with a lethal weapon.