November 7, 2006: One of the most dangerous jobs an infantryman faces is the "search." Works like this. A platoon moves into a new area. Gotta check it out, for enemy troops, booby traps or, civilians or, well, any "evidence" that will give you a better idea of what you are up against. Same situation when you are settled in somewhere, and have to constantly watch out for enemy activity. Those guys on the edge of the "perimeter" are the first ones to get hurt if something hostile comes along.
Now the U.S. Army has a new system, called "Sentinel," which provides a way to have robots take on some of these jobs. Using the lightweight (under fifty pound) robots used for checking out roadside bombs, or caves and buildings, Sentinel adds software that enables the robots to more effectively search its sector, without the need for an operator to guide it. This enables one operator to control a squad of robots, as they move out and search, or patrol, a large area. The operator would only check what the robot is seeing if the software on the robot indicated that there was something of interest.
This concept, called "swarming," is nothing new. The army was looking into it over twenty years ago. But the hardware wasn't up to it, and there were still software issues. Now the hardware is here. The megapixel cameras you can get in your cell phone are also cheap and powerful enough to be used on small robots. The cheap, multi-gigabyte memory sticks you carry around on your key chain, provide the robots with enough space to put all the data they need store the software and data needed to recognize obstacles, or something worth alerting the operator about.
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan have moved this sort of technology along faster. Wars always do that. There's more money, and more urgency. The troops need stuff like this, fast. Plus, this kind of technology noticeably reduces casualties. What booby traps the robots don't spot, they are likely to trigger, and that's one less human injury.
These robot swarms also have civilians uses. Security and law enforcement are the most obvious one, but there are many industrial and scientific uses as well. So the technology is not being created just to replace soldiers, but to continue to automation that has characterized the continuing growth of technological innovation.
