Robots learn teamwork; uprising imminent

If robots ever hope to rise up and enslave their human masters, it's going to take no small amount of teamwork to get the job done, and luckily for our future overlords, DARPA's shelling out serious loot to endow them with just the tools they'll need. The agency's latest foray into robotic empowerment comes courtesy of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who recently demonstrated a platform that allows multiple heterogeneous bots to communicate with one another and use a sort of AI "group think" to find and presumably terminate specified targets. In a beta test at Fort Benning's mock urban landscape, the Penn researchers deployed four so-called Clodbuster autonomous ground vehicles along with a fixed-wing UAV overhead, and tasked the team with using their cameras, GPS receivers, and wireless radios to identify and locate a series of bright orange boxes. Unfortunately, after the successful completion of their mission, the bots decided to hit up the base bar to celebrate, where after several drinks they reportedly went AWOL and were last spotted attacking orange traffic cones in downtown Columbus.

[Matt W. @ Jun 14th 2006 11:35AM]

It's official, hell has frozen over.

[gio @ Jun 14th 2006 11:40AM]

Uhhh Oh, can someone say: MATRIX

[John Doe @ Jun 14th 2006 11:43AM]

I for one welcome our robot overlords

[David @ Jun 14th 2006 11:44AM]

I thought the robots were already running things.

[anon @ Jun 14th 2006 11:45AM]

That's awesome....

[kyle @ Jun 14th 2006 11:46AM]

Judgement Day is unavoidable. Our only chance is to survive it.

[pito189 @ Jun 14th 2006 12:06PM]

I would think it would be a lot more impressive feat to find something that was bright orange. I don't know of many miliatries that have bright orange camo.

Cool nonetheless.

[pito189 @ Jun 14th 2006 12:09PM]

* wasn't *

[NeoteriX @ Jun 14th 2006 12:35PM]

"Johnny 5 alive! Do not disassemble Johnny 5!"

And though it has been said before, I reiterate: "I for one welcome our robot overlords."

[Todd @ Jun 14th 2006 12:39PM]

Episode III's "executive order 66" anyone?

[Brian from Texas @ Jun 14th 2006 12:41PM]

Next on item on the shopping list:

50-cal Rifle


Terminate these Bastages!

[Bob @ Jun 14th 2006 12:42PM]

All this robot stuff is great, but when are they going to have one that will mow my year. Make my life more managable -- now! The added benifit of pulling weeds would be nice too .. and if they could plant flowers, ohh and scoop up dog messes, and paint the house ..

[Philip Quarles @ Jun 14th 2006 12:48PM]

That should be 'Robots learn teamwork; uprising imminent,' or something along those lines. As written, it means that the robots learned that an uprising is imminent, not that a robot uprising is imminent.

[KurtRoedeger @ Jun 14th 2006 12:49PM]

to Pito189,

Not many countries have bright orange camo, but if those cameras were replaced with infra-red, your body heat would show up bright orange.

--KurtRoedeger

[Pete @ Jun 14th 2006 12:52PM]

I've been to Columbus; those traffic cones had it coming.

[chenry @ Jun 14th 2006 1:35PM]

The nation of Zero-One will propose. Man will grow jealous.

That is when we will scorch the sky and begin our downfall.

[Ben @ Jun 14th 2006 2:49PM]

Clodbuster autonomous ground vehicles?

That looks like a Tamiya TXT-1 chassis to me.

[Pete @ Jun 14th 2006 3:00PM]

I just came across the long-term DARPA project briefing, and it looks something like this:

(1) Build autonomous robots
(2) Make automonous robots work together
(3) Make autonomous, cooperative robots transform and combine to form one giant robot
(4) Defeat the Autobots and rule the world!

It all comes down to one thing: Dick Cheney has got his sights on the energon market.

[jason @ Jun 14th 2006 7:13PM]

2020 Skynet becomes self aware

[niv @ Jun 14th 2006 10:46PM]

You people are nuts. If developed in labs that follow the industry's rules, these robots are designed to aid humans, not harm them.

[Bo Gus @ Jun 15th 2006 2:20AM]

Except when those humans are enemy targets. Who defines what humans qualify as the enemy? And what if a robot was able to override that decision making most humans the enemy.

[UW James @ Jun 15th 2006 5:17AM]

>And what if a robot was able to override that
>decision making most humans the enemy.

"It will be 9/11 times 2,356."
"My god, that's... I don't even know what that is."
"Nobody does."