30 per cent of U.S. Army may be robotic by 2020

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Robots in the military is no longer a subject of science fiction movies. They are already being used extensively in diffusing mines, bombs etc.

Washington University Assistant Professor Bill Smart and doctoral student Doug Few who works on new robotic technologies for army says they aren’t envisioning robotic soldiers from movies like terminator in the near future.

As ANI reports:

When the military says 'robot' they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots."

But the Robots will still need a " graceful human intervention" to avoid them committing any war crimes. Doug Few is working on integrating a Nintendo Wii motion controller with a robot to make controlling more natural and easy.

As ANI reports:

We forget that when we're controlling robots in the lab it's really pretty safe and no one's trying to kill us. But if you are in a war zone and you're hunched over a laptop, that's not a good place to be. You want to be able to use your eyes in one place and use your hand to control the robot without tying up all of your attention.

With more robots entering the battlefield, more ethical questions are bound to come such as If a robotic soldier kills a human being, where to place the blame.