I’d guess that communications are a problem—you’d need more bandwidth to send enough video back to drive a car remotely than to fly a plane, and it’s probably easier to lose contact, too. Not to mention the difficulties of fighting inside a city you don’t want to simply destroy: can your robot open a door and go up a flight of stairs?
This is the kind of thing that’s being researched by the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex, though.
This is the kind of thing that’s being researched by the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex, though.
This is where they’ve got to (scroll down to the archive link). It isn’t yet anywhere near good enough for the task.
For remote rather than automonous operation, there would be major humanitarian applications as well, but the technical problems are still huge. There’s latency and reliability of communications, terrain that would be challenging even for people on the spot, dexterity in confined spaces, and the problem of refuelling. None of this is a Simple Matter Of Engineering.
I’d guess that communications are a problem—you’d need more bandwidth to send enough video back to drive a car remotely than to fly a plane, and it’s probably easier to lose contact, too. Not to mention the difficulties of fighting inside a city you don’t want to simply destroy: can your robot open a door and go up a flight of stairs?
This is the kind of thing that’s being researched by the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex, though.
This is where they’ve got to (scroll down to the archive link). It isn’t yet anywhere near good enough for the task.
For remote rather than automonous operation, there would be major humanitarian applications as well, but the technical problems are still huge. There’s latency and reliability of communications, terrain that would be challenging even for people on the spot, dexterity in confined spaces, and the problem of refuelling. None of this is a Simple Matter Of Engineering.