Robots - the future of wars?

The evolution of military robotics is surprising, and horror technologies are starting to appear, similar to those presented in the Titanfall 2 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare games.

P.V. Singer is a famous figure in military circles. One of the main thinkers in this field, he wrote " Wired for War " (Created for War), fruitful reflections on combat robots, and " Ghost Fleet " (Ghost Fleet), the story of the Third World War, through which he gave a report to the Committee US Senate Armed Forces . He was a technical consultant in creating games such as Call of Duty and Metal Gear, as well as on the set of Hollywood films. When serious people want to discuss the use of machines in wars, they invite Singer, or come to his office in the think tank of the New America Foundation, located just one block from the White House.

Therefore, there was nothing surprising in the fact that he was invited to a military-game project trying to predict the course of wars in the future. But when he arrived there, he found that the authors of the project used pictures from such films as “Terminator” to illustrate the future combat robots.

“Why don't you take pictures of real cars that are already operating?” He asked. Surprisingly, even military planners, representing the future of wars, tend to NF-robots. "But I had to tell them that they did not completely reject the idea of furs ."
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But, despite the abundance of existing military robots, the games also lean towards their sf versions. Over the past couple of months, two future war games, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Titanfall 2, showcased a world inhabited by autonomous military machines that emulate human anatomy, from anthropomorphic robo-infantry to AI-controlled mechs.


Titanfall 2

How realistic is this? Does this correspond to the actual use of robots on the battlefield, and in general, why do we need a robot in the form of a man, with arms, legs and head? In fact, this is a very difficult question, opening the result of mixing future robots in the artist’s view and the machines that are actually being built by scientists.

Despite the sci-fi flavor, the question of the appearance and actions of combat robots is surprisingly strongly associated with today. Next year, the Trump administration will decide whether the robots can be allowed to seek out and kill people on the battlefield without human leadership.

Step by step

The contrast between the practical use of robots and NF has existed since the appearance of this genre. In the story of “Robbie”, which opened the collection “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov from 1950, Azimov predicted that by 1998 robots would already move well enough to become a partner in games for children, but at the same time “Talking Robot” would be cumbersome device limited by the museum. In reality, everything happened the other way around - you probably have a “talking” bot in your pocket, who can answer questions, but science still has to master the biomechanics of the human movement.

According to Dr. Singer, legs are challenging for engineers because they combine movement and balance. One step requires the work of a dozen muscles, joints and ligaments that work together, from the toes to the hips, and the body and brain are doing on the fly. Robots have not yet reached this. Due to the complexity of the task, Singer believes that the development of walking robots, even such well-known representatives of them, like Atlas from Boston Dynamics , is at the stage of a “scientific project”.

“Work on them is underway, but not one of the projects has yet been put into action,” says Singer. - There is not a single working prototype on display at the exhibition. We have not reached this point yet. ”

According to him, although in the laboratory anthropomorphic robots look promising, but now they are only suitable for shooting cool videos for YouTube . Many can not work without reference to external power. At the same time, other types of military robots - moving on wheels, tracks, wings and propellers - are already used on the battlefield. “Footed robots are still a scientific project, but other types can be touched, seen and bought.”



When Singer consults game developers and authors of war scenarios, he keeps them up to date with the real speed of development of robotics. Therefore, in Black Ops II, unfolding in the near future, you will see insect-like drones, drones and miniature watch-tanks, and no humanoid robots.

“It’s hard to imagine that in ten years we will have many robots with legs,” he says. “After 50 years, these problems will be solved.”

But, according to him, sooner or later we will see robots with legs, since such systems are extremely in demand for urban battles.

Human bodies for human cities

Partially, people get stuck on humanoid robots due to lack of imagination, clinging to what they saw in the movie. But in the future, anthropomorphic robots will certainly be stationed on the battlefield. Given the speed of urbanization and population growth, the US military college predicts that in the coming decades more battles will be fought in places with high urbanization — that is, in places designed for what moves and looks like people.

“If you have conceived a robot capable of moving around in a building,” says Singer, “then remember that buildings are designed for people of a certain height or shape. This is a real design problem. We build the world in a certain way. ”

Researchers are trying to create robots that can move in the conditions of the simplest human architecture. In 2008, the TechX Challenge was offered a prize of $ 700,000 to a team whose robot would be able to autonomously enter the building, climb the stairs, and press a button on a certain floor in the elevator. No one won it . Most robots did not even get to the front door. And it did not even need to open.

But technology does not stand still. Recently, a team from Stanford built a robot that can not only press the desired button, but also recognize the buttons on the elevator panel that they have not seen before. It was a development leap. The robot worked "eyes" and "finger" - two critical components of the equipment necessary for people to move around the buildings. But the staircase - the same unnatural human invention as the elevator - could stop it.

Conversely, the bomb disposal robots currently used are usually moved on wheels, tracks, or combine these methods. Many of them can climb ladders, albeit awkwardly.


Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

According to Singer, legged systems deserve to be developed. Different systems of movement are suitable for different types of terrain - the wheels are fast, but they need flat surfaces, the caterpillars sacrifice speed for movement on stones - but human legs are universal. “You can walk on anything,” he says, “on level ground, steps or grief. You can walk both in concrete and in sand. ”

Mastering the movement in buildings is also necessary, since the military needs robots that can clean buildings - an extremely dangerous occupation. One of the robots performing their role is the 110 FirstLook from Endeavor Robotics , a portable drone that can be thrown through a window and then controlled remotely, allowing soldiers to explore the building through the cameras of the robot. The Pentagon hopes that the assortment of future manned and unmanned systems will capture the range from Iron Man exoskeletons to robots moving from door to door, thanks to which soldiers can clean rooms without victims. Such systems can protect the lives of soldiers, but make the war even more terrible.

This dynamic is traced in Titanfall and Infinite Warfare. In Infinite Warfare, the role of storming the premises of the forces is performed by defensive robots from the Settlement Defense Front, expelling players from fortified positions and often breaking into rooms. In Titanfall 2, a player can crack robots and turn them into allies, so that they shield you from the bullets, while simultaneously processing your enemies with fire. In both cases, there is a feeling that the robots will someday be able to replace living soldiers in places that are too dangerous. This trend is developing now.

Robot for every task, challenge for every robot

In Titanfall 2 and Infinite Warfare there are not only combat robots - there are also industrial models. You can get into the spacecraft or climb into the mine on Mercury, and find there robots performing work in conditions in which people would not survive.

It is in such conditions that military and industrial robots are used today - but, unlike their relatives, UAVs, ground robots today mostly protect human life, and do not take it away.

Modern military robots mainly perform the function of bomb disposal (Explosive Ordinance Disposal, EOD), or work in the presence of radioactive or chemically active materials. After the accident at the Fukushima station in 2011, the Tokyo Electric Power Company hired a contractor to review the scene of the accident with the help of the T-Hawk drone . Drones are used on Fukushima today; last year, a specially manufactured drone transmitted video and radiation readings from inside the reactor , having worked for three hours in conditions in which a person could not survive even for a few seconds. In a sense, this is the best use of robots - fulfilling tasks that, in past disasters, for example, in Chernobyl, took the lives of workers.

With the development of technology, military planners look for other dangerous jobs for robots. For example, automatically moving convoys can reduce the number of casualties that hit a mine. Robots can increase the number of transported supplies, which will reduce the number of returns to the base and protect infantry from fire, trying to deliver ammunition and equipment to the battlefield.


Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

This year, the Israeli company Tactical Robotics conducted the first successful flight of AirMule , an autonomous air rescue drone capable of landing on the battlefield and taking off from it in places where a traditional evacuation helicopter does not fit. John Hopkins proved that drones can deliver blood , while in Japan they test delivery of defibrillators .

You can see that these drones look more like the equipment they replace, than like the people whose work they take on - and this is how it was conceived. The task of the robot is to perform its function, and not to imitate people. A medical robot will look like a non-medical man, but a robotic: Robotic Extraction Vehicle / Robotic Evacuation Vehicle (REX / REV). This is an automatically moving machine, equipped with robosilkami. According to Singer, the reasons for this trend are practical, and the market is leading them.

“If cars are made at the factory, the changes needed to make robots will take less money if you just do the same,” he says. “We are changing software, not hardware.” He adds that customers — including the military — are also more willing to buy familiar equipment.

For the military, this is especially important, since the generals, who have the last word in procurement, are quite elderly, and do not really trust equipment. For example, last year, the captain of the army cyber institute created a device to interfere with drone-based Raspberry Pi. It could be made in the form of a radio, but he made it in the form of a weapon, so that the higher ranks could be more understandable. “When all this is placed on a rifle base, command is easier to digest, ” he explained to Popular Mechanics . “Targeted, shot, fell.”

The ability to explain complex technology to superiors will be key to the next administration. Trump admitted that in 2007 he did not have a computer , and he read emails and online articles from printouts . For such officials, the familiar-looking technology will have an advantage when making a purchase decision.

But you can not just modify the current machine, because it delays innovation and reduces efficiency. Robots for mine clearance in the form of tractors can now be sold better, but in the end, an empty driver's cabin will be considered a waste of resources and eliminated. Part of the advantages of autonomous systems is the ability to eliminate systems that have become unnecessary, which will save fuel and make room for cargo or equipment.

In addition, robotics may be lagging behind due to attempts to reproduce human movements, rather than improving them. And although with the help of legs it is really convenient to move, the bipedal system is not necessarily the most effective. Multi-legged robots can become more stable platforms for shooting and solve problems with balancing - that is, the first working robots with their legs can more resemble spiders or dogs than people. In the future, combat robots can borrow design ideas from nature, as in the game " Horizon: Zero Dawn " about battles between cavemen and robots.



There are many projects trying to reproduce biological systems in robots. European researchers are working on an artificial eye that repeats the complex eyes of insects. In MIT, they make a robot similar to a cheetah - with money DARPA - able to run at high speed and jump over obstacles . Other scientists make drones capable of feeding on energy from high-voltage power lines, sitting down on them , like birds, or “eating” organic matter and burning it for energy (this robot did n’t like journalists very much when they learned that theoretically it could feed on corpses) . One team wants to build a sensor that reproduces the unique vision of a hawk, something like a picture-in-picture system on a television.

“The hawks are capable of scanning large areas while also concentrating on prey,” says Singer. “Such a system should be in our high-rise drones.”

But the most interesting thing, in his words, that robots borrow from nature is disaggregated consciousness. We present robots with large intelligent systems that resemble people, but now more and more attention is paid to flocks of small robots , each of which has its own task, resembling ants, capable of performing coordinated attacks or sightings.

“Any single ant is not particularly smart,” says Singer, “but together they can perform very complex tasks. “The same dilemma appears in robotics - will one large super-smart system perform the task, or will many small parts work?”

And packs of robots are not speculative technology, they are already working. Disney launched an airborne light show in Orlando, in which 300 drones with LED backlighting form images of the New Year tree and flying birds to music. It is easy to imagine a frightening future in which such drones will carry not LEDs, but cluster bombs.

Someone is studying ants, someone is trying to repeat the features of hawks, and it is possible that in the future robots, even resembling people, will become technological hybrids of different creatures. The robots of the future will probably run like cheetahs, see the world like flies and enjoy human hands.

And since robots are unnatural creatures, they do not have to obey the laws of biology and evolution. On Earth, there is no animal with eyes on its hands - but modern robots for bomb disposal have such a feature, as they are used for demining. Fighting robots may not be humanoid or animalistic, but more like the monsters from the books of Lovecraft, with a bunch of hands and eyes.

It’s interesting to fantasize on this topic, until you imagine yourself in the role of a soldier, faced with such a monster on the battlefield.

Fiction follows reality, and then reality fiction

Despite all these opportunities, the gaming industry does not deviate from the traditional NF-concepts of combat robots - more resembling an Iron Chipper or Metropolis than modern combat robots. As a consultant to gaming studios, Singer tries to convince them to create more mundane systems, but the designers remain biased.

“You say: 'this is unrealistic,' and you are answered: 'But robots must look like this,'” explains Singer. "Science fiction influences our view of the future."

But the constant feeding of culture with such images of robots has the effect of the reverse impact, because of which military commanders, having seen enough of Hollywood robots, believe that the technology will lead us exactly there. “In the military aspect, the same problem: everyone believes that the design should be futuristic, because it looks futuristic. This is a vicious circle. ”

But although this happens in the games Titanfall 2 and Infinite Warfare, many of which they depict correctly. According to modern military theories, robots will accompany and complement people in battle, and not replace them. In the military laboratory, the marines come up with the system MAARS - a remote-controlled tank, equipped with cameras, an M240 machine gun and a grenade launcher.


Call of duty

Meanwhile, the Russian unmanned tank Uran-9 is trying to combine anti-personnel and armor-piercing weapons in a small volume, with the crew operating the machine from a safe distance. These mini-tanks are similar to companion robots from Titanfall 2 or Infinite Warfare, and their task is about the same - to supplement the firepower of the infantry and protect it.

When Reyes commands armored fur in Infinite Warfare, he essentially controls the system remotely, much like the infantrymen imagine the work of the MAARS system, or the Russians, Uran-9. Like the autonomous grenades in Infinite Warfare — explosives with legs like a crab searching for an enemy in hiding — became a robotic version of the weapon used by the Dallas police this summer. The police tied the C4 to a robot for the disposal of mines and sent him closer to the sniper , who was sitting in the shelter. This alarming incident - the first confirmed murder of a man with the help of a ground drone - forced the police to reconsider their rules and issue instructions on the cases in which the use of drone killers is allowed.

The good news is that the Ministry of Defense, following the example of the rare use of UAVs in the “war on terrorism”, is reluctant to work on the commissioning of unmanned vehicles. The predecessor of the system MAARS, SWORDS (also controlled remotely), was deployed in Iraq, but never fired at the enemy - in part because of the problems with aiming, identified during testing. The manager of the development program of the device suggested that the Pentagon is being cautious , believing that if a ground combat robot does not meet expectations or makes a mistake with a goal, it will throw the program back for decades.

But the Pentagon’s delicacy in using drones may disappear soon - the new administration is able to rewrite the rules for using robots in a war.

Trump's administration will determine the future of robots

Singer believes that increasing automation will have major economic and legal consequences, and that the Trump administration will decide the future of war and peace. Robomobili will lead to accidents in which no one is to blame (are these sensors faulty, or brakes?), As well as to the disappearance of jobs in transportation and production .

“The issue of using robots in wars and on the roads has not only legal implications; More and more people will feel like robots squeeze them out economically, says Singer. - Something similar is happening in China, with the Foxconn factory - they are constantly increasing automation. A few weeks ago, CNN showed such a cute story about a robot capable of making a shirt from start to finish. What does this mean for Bangladesh? ”

But, despite the economic consequences of automation, the Trump administration will have to make a final decision about the use of a lethal autonomous weapon (Lethal Autonomous Weapon, LAW). The current rules of 2012 stipulate the need for the presence of a person who controls the opening of an autonomous system of fire - so that the weapon could not kill on its own. The rules are vague, and they can be circumvented if necessary, but according to their conditions, decisions must be made by the person.

“They have a clause according to which in five years they can be updated or left as is,” says Singer. “Next year will be just five years.”

In other words, in the White House, Trump will decide whether the killer robots will become part of the American arsenal - or the choice between life and death will remain in the hands of man.