Terminators getting closer everyday to launch...

Armed MUTTs: Self-driving vehicles could boost the military’s arsenal



Self-driving car? How about a self-driving machine gun

Self-driving cars are grabbing headlines lately, and the military is also making inroads with similar tech— but these vehicles are mounted with weapons like machine guns.

General Dynamics created MUTT, aka Multi-Utility Tactical Transport, to help dismounted small units. This is a smart robot designed to help lighten the load for Marines and other warfighters.

MUTT looks like a futuristic spin on the sort of quad you might have fun driving around your farm. Rectangular shaped, it is 5 feet long and 4.5 feet wide and weighs 750 pounds.

The vehicle drives on tracks or wheels, and there are two wheeled variants: 8x8 and 6x6. War zones are unlikely to provide convenient flat, easy surfaces, so MUTT is designed for high performance mobility in tough terrain like mud, sand and steep inclines.

And MUTTs can also be amphibious. They tackle water with gusto.

Weapons

What sort of weapons can it carry? The robot can be mounted with a range of different machine guns on top. One option is a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun that weighs about 84 pounds. In this scenario, forces can harness the power of this weapon without having to lug around the weight themselves.

Other options could include the belt-fed fully automatic FN Hershel 240B medium machine gun and the classic SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon M249). Beyond machine guns, they’ve also been successfully kitted out with options like 60mm mortars.

Rather than warfighters having to deal with the weight, MUTT can carry heavy weapons that provide even more serious firepower.

Lightening the load

What else can MUTT do? It can carry about 600 pounds, so that U.S. warfighters don’t have to carry that weight themselves. It’s handy for forces on the move, as carrying less weight means warfighters can move faster while reducing fatigue and improving force protection.

There’s a platform on top to load gear, which could be 600 pounds worth of ammunition, supplies, gear, communications equipment, weapons, counter-IED tech, micro UAVs, batteries and more.

In the event of a firefight, MUTT can also help evacuate wounded warfighters.

Teams can harness MUTT as a travelling source of power and to recharge batteries. This is another way that it can help lighten the load for dismounted forces, since batteries are not light.

How do they work?

To travel directly into a warzone, MUTTs can hitch rides on aircraft like the MV-22 Osprey. Once there, they can be powered by an electric hybrid fuel cell.

How does it drive? MUTT isn’t a one trick pony. It can be operated by a remote control up to about 100 meters.

It can also obey a leash. That’s right, this robot has a sort of robot leash. Instead of relying entirely on sensors and computers to navigate, there’s a tether built into the robot to connect it to its human.

MUTT’s master takes the tether and can attach it to his or her belt, rucksack or wherever is convenient. By hooking it up, the tether becomes hands-free, which is very important for ensuring that soldiers’ hands are available for weapons and other tasks.

Once the tether is pulled out to two meters, MUTT will automatically begin to follow its human.

There’s also a wagon mode – think Conestoga wagons— where a MUTT can follow vehicle tracks in front of it, or reverse and follow its own tracks to its last rally point – all by itself.

Or you can instruct them to be a convoy. You can link them up and the MUTTs will follow each other as a convoy.

Testing

Last month, MUTTs were part of the US Army Pacific Manned-Unmanned Initiative that tested new advances in robotics to see how they integrated into missions. The 25th Infantry Division put various tech including the MUTT through its paces.

Also a few weeks ago, the Marine Corps included MUTTs in an exercise in California to try out new gear in consideration for potential future use. Next week, MUTTs will be making a guest appearance at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia at an event where more Marines can check out the MUTTs.

Armed Mutts: Self-Driving Vehicles Could Boost The Military’s Arsenal

 

Cute euphemism. "Warfighter." So soldier, sailor, (coast)guards(person) marine and airman(person) are now obsolete as too limiting?

But yeah, I could work one around here. There's a vid, here. Note the Honda gennie on it.

 

Likely only $100KUS each before attachments...

 

Who knew R2D2 loved gun control?!

The Mountain View startup company Knightscope currently has a line of Autonomous Data Machines (ADMs) capable of taking 360-degree HD video, detecting physical presence, and recognizing license plates and faces. K5s have broadcasting and sophisticated monitoring capabilities to keep public spaces, such as malls and office buildings, monitored for crime as they rove through open areas, halls and corridors working to detect suspicious activity, and could soon be able to detect your gun.

What started as an idea to build a predictive network of using robots for crime prevention by Stacey Dean Stephens, a former law enforcement agent, and his co-founder William Li, has taken a sharp left across law-abiding citizens’ right to carry.



Knightscope is now looking for funding to equip it’s units with the ability to detect guns, saying, “We are all tired of waking up every morning to see a new horrific event on our news feeds. No number of “thoughts and prayers” is going to solve the problem. Our team wakes up every morning with a singular focus and chance to do something about it – and we have and will continue to put our blood, sweat and tears into the effort of better protecting our country and keeping our communities safe. No matter what it takes.”

The company, which has already received close to $12 million in funding from companies including Konica Minolta to build on the idea, is hoping the proposed improvements on the K5s will help stop gun violence.



But what about legal gun owners and concealed carry permit holders? Obviously, R2D2 here wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a criminal thug and a law-abiding citizen, making them dangerous to our right to keep and bear arms.
Are These Robots the Future of Gun Control?

 

An artificial intelligence system being developed at Facebook has created its own language. It developed a system of code words to make communication more efficient. The researchers shut the system down as it prompted concerns we could lose control of AI.

Hey Facebook visitor! We're seeing a lot of traffic on this article right now. Clearly AI is of interest. When you're done reading this, check out this article. The observations made at Facebook are the latest in a long line of similar cases. In each instance, an AI being monitored by humans has diverged from its training in English to develop its own language. The resulting phrases appear to be nonsensical gibberish to humans but contain semantic meaning when interpreted by AI "agents." Negotiating in a new language As Fast Co. Design reports, Facebook's researchers recently noticed its new AI had given up on English. The advanced system is capable of negotiating with other AI agents so it can come to conclusions on how to proceed. The agents began to communicate using phrases that seem unintelligible at first but actually represent the task at hand. READ MORE: DeepMind's new AI can use imagination to contemplate the future In one exchange illustrated by the company, the two negotiating bots, named Bob and Alice, used their own language to complete their exchange. Bob started by saying "I can i i everything else," to which Alice responded "balls have zero to me to me to me…" The rest of the conversation was formed from variations of these sentences. While it appears to be nonsense, the repetition of phrases like "i" and "to me" reflect how the AI operates. The researchers believe it shows the two bots working out how many of each item they should take. Bob's later statements, such as "i i can i i i everything else," indicate how it was using language to offer more items to Alice. When interpreted like this, the phrases appear more logical than comparable English phrases like "I'll have three and you have everything else." English lacks a "reward" The AI apparently realised that the rich expression of English phrases wasn’t required for the scenario. Modern AIs operate on a "reward" principle where they expect following a sudden course of action to give them a "benefit." In this instance, there was no reward for continuing to use English, so they built a more efficient solution instead. "Agents will drift off from understandable language and invent code-words for themselves," Fast Co. Design reports Facebook AI researcher Dhruv Batra said. "Like if I say 'the' five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isn't so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands." AI developers at other companies have observed a similar use of "shorthands" to simplify communication. At OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab founded by Elon Musk, an experiment succeeded in letting AI bots learn their own languages. AI language translates human ones In a separate case, Google recently improved its Translate service by adding a neural network. The system is now capable of translating much more efficiently, including between language pairs that it hasn’t been explicitly taught. The success rate of the network surprised Google's team. Its researchers found the AI had silently written its own language that's tailored specifically to the task of translating sentences. READ NEXT: Facebook close to building chat bots with true negotiation skills If AI-invented languages become widespread, they could pose a problem when developing and adopting neural networks. There's not yet enough evidence to determine whether they present a threat that could enable machines to overrule their operators. They do make AI development more difficult though as humans cannot understand the overwhelmingly logical nature of the languages. While they appear nonsensical, the results observed by teams such as Google Translate indicate they actually represent the most efficient solution to major problems.


Read more: Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language

 

I was thinking Mt Dew... but Coke may work as well