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米軍の武装ロボットが反逆？ 実戦配備11時間でイラクから撤収
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http://www.technobahn.com/news/2008/200804130308.html
米軍の武装ロボットが反逆？ 実戦配備11時間でイラクから撤収
【Technobahn 2008/4/13 03:08】米軍がイラクで試験的に実戦配備した武装ロボット「ソーズ（SWORDS）」がイラクでの実戦配備からわずか11時間で撤収されていたことが9日、判明した。
米ポピュラーメカニクス誌によると米軍は3機のSWORDSを2007年に試験的にイラクに実戦配備。しかし、実戦配備早々、命じてもいないので銃口を味方に向けるなど反逆するそぶりを見せたことを受けて、実践配備は時期尚早との決断が下されて模様だ。
SWORDSが味方に銃砲を向けた理由は明らかにされていないものの、ソフトウェア上の不具合か、遠隔操縦用の電波に混線が生じたものと見られている。
米国防総省でSWORDS計画のプログラムマネジャーを務めているケビン・フェーヒー（Kevin Fahey）氏は、「このような事故が起きた以上、次に実戦配備が決定されるまでには10〜20年はかかることになるだろう」と述べている。
SWORDSは米機械大手のフォスター・ミラー（Foster-Miller）社が開発を行った遠隔操縦方式の武装ロボット。同社では爆発物処理用のロボット「タロン（TALON）」を生産し米軍に多数供給を行ってきた実績を持つ。ソーズはこの従来型の爆発物処理用のロボットに自動小銃を装備した武装版。兵士に生命の危険が及ぶ、戦闘地域での利用が見込まれていた。
昨年10月には南アフリカでコンピューター制御の対空機関砲が演習中に暴走し、周りに居た兵士20名を死傷させると大事故も起きていた。
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【Technobahn 2008/4/13 03:08】米軍がイラクで試験的に実戦配備した武装ロボット「ソーズ（SWORDS）」がイラクでの実戦配備からわずか11時間で撤収されていたことが9日、判明した
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4258103.html
April 9, 2008
Non-Answer on Armed Robot Pullout From Iraq Reveals Fragile Bot Industry
PITTSBURGH — We already knew that iRobot CEO Colin Angle was running the only successful business in the home robotics game, so it was fitting that he closed his keynote at the RoboBusiness Conference here today by asking if there’s really a robot industry in the first place: “Are we sure we’re not just an adjunct to another industry?”
After all, Disney stopped buying its animatronic actors years ago, and started building them. What’s to stop retail chains from adding a robotics division, or an upright vacuum-maker from hiring its own team of roboticists? This is not, we can assume, what audience wanted to hear. This conference, whose founder and biggest sponsor is iRobot, is a place for deals to be made, and an industry to be cultivated. But as the public continues to devour news of Asimo’s latest sprint or stumble, and schools across the country vie for scholarships in national robotics competitions, the industry itself is barely out of the incubator.
For proof, take a walk through the RoboBusiness exhibit hall. One presenter claimed that his company’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was bigger than all of the booths here combined. We believe him. The roughly 40 exhibitors are clustered together in the center of a sprawling room. Microsoft’s booth is the size of a cubicle, and many companies show up with little more than brochures for the impressive-looking robots that couldn’t make the trip. iRobot’s booth is the biggest by far, with the new, bright orange ConnectR video-conferencing bot circling your feet, and the Looj tossing leaves out of a makeshift gutter. I search around for the Warrior, a bulked-up Packbot that’s being tested for use as an armed robot. But it isn’t even here, one rep explains, because it’s too heavy.
This is how fragile the robotics industry is: Last year, three armed ground bots were deployed to Iraq. But the remote-operated SWORDS units were almost immediately pulled off the battlefield, before firing a single shot at the enemy. Here at the conference, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey’s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren’t supposed to. His understanding is that “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.” In other words, the SWORDS swung around in the wrong direction, and the plug got pulled fast. No humans were hurt, but as Fahey pointed out, “once you’ve done something that’s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.”
So SWORDS was yanked because it made people nervous. Meanwhile, the V-22 Osprey program has killed 30 people during test flights, but the tiltrotor aircraft is currently in active service. Fahey expects another armed ground bot to be deployed within the year, but the point has been made: For robots, there is no margin for error. Suffice it to say, this is not a welcoming environment for startups.
During a roundtable discussion at CES in January, Angle was the first to point out that one company—his—doesn’t make an industry. iRobot has thrived because it sells what are possibly the only useful consumer robots in the world, as well as unmanned vehicles for use by the military. But for anyone looking to enter the industry, Angle described the experience as “nightmarish.”
The risk for new companies is incredibly high, since it involves either competing with highly entrenched contractors for defense money—including global powerhouses like Boeing and Lockheed Martin—or finding a consumer niche that’s been waiting for a robot’s firm hand. “The killer app that will drive the industry hasn’t yet emerged,” Angle said during his keynote here. Although 5 percent of last year’s new vacuum sales were iRobot products, and millions of the maid bots have been sold to date, even the Roomba doesn’t constitute a killer app.
Angle isn’t sure what that app might be, but he suspects that as today’s increasingly robo-friendly populations ages, the demand for domestic bots will take off. “When I’m old, I want robots to make my bed and clean my house.“ Angle said. “I want to live in my own house, until death comes and jumps on me in my sleep.” If Angle is right, then robotics could indeed become a healthy, viable industry right when we most need it. That is, if it can survive for another 30 years. —Erik Sofge
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