And some things machines can always do better than people, anyway. Some innovations are already about to be deployed in the field.
Crawlers
The Micro Unattended Mobility System (MUMS) device, currently under development—a small, autonomous vehicle no larger than 3 inches across and 12 inches long. It will be robust enough to travel on its own, and survive the high accelerations and decelerations associated with ground penetrations, suffering peak impacts of 1,500 G. (In the long run, it might be sent forth from a grenade launcher.)
This crawler uses two side-by-side wheels that drag behind them an active tail, which can double as an antenna. Its central body houses electronics and a suite of navigation and surveillance sensors, including a modular GPS antenna, communications antenna, seismic sensor, microphone, electromagnetic detectors, and perhaps chemical sniffers more sensitive than a human nose.
The MUMS rover's embedded intelligence system will be controlled by iRobotics' own Behavior Control software, featuring, as a brochure has it, "redundant sensing and flexible system architecture." Overlapping and redundant sensing makes systems robust in the face of sensor noise, failure, or unexpected conditions, such as loss of primary communication or sensors. Flexible system architecture adds supervisory layers to observe its own lower performance and notice problems. At present, self-moving robots often repeatedly run into the same obstacle or get caught in a cyclical path. The MUMS higher levels introduce a random action or series of actions, a simple way to add an element of "creativity" that often allows it to overcome or "solve" unexpected situations.
Again, such mobile sensor systems will first be used for covert surveillance and reconnaissance, but the need to travel unnoticed into hostile environments is not unique to the military. Since MUMS robots do not require airdrop, they can also help out law enforcement that needs to covertly position sensors to collect intelligence during standoff situations.
The next generation will feature combined wearable computers and mobile robots. For military use, the robot becomes part of a reconnaissance team, able to respond to verbal orders with local initiative and intelligence. The robot moves in advance of its human team members, keeping them in a safe position while sending back video images and gathered intelligence.
A soldier will direct and monitor the robot's progress through a wearable intuitive interface, at a distance of about a kilometer. The system will use natural voice recognition, a head-mounted display and head tracking, so the robot will know that the command is, "Go in the direction I'm looking." The soldier will use a head-mounted display with computer generated graphic overlays. At first they will look like deadly toy trucks on treads, with camera snouts pointing front, side and rear, a machine gun that can be slaved to the cameras, and able to hear and smell. Weighing around 100 pounds, they will cruise at about walking speed and keep it up for four hours on lithium-ion batteries.
The soldier will be able to hear what the robot does, and maneuver it with a hand-held joystick, so combat will ape home computer games. This is no accident. A generation has trained using these entertainments, which in turn have been shaped by market forces to be the easiest and most responsive to use.
Beyond that era, robo-fighters will need less supervision. They will increasingly react, see and think like people, while going places we could not.
Underwater Rovers
This class of autonomous robots seeks to equal the efficiency, acceleration, and maneuvrability of fish. Biologically inspired, they use flexible, wiggling, actuated hulls able to produce the large accelerations needed for fishlike bursts of speed and sudden swerves. They mechanically approximate a fish's fluid swimming motion and navigate environments previously considered inaccessible.
The prototype, named Dart, developed by iRobotics Corp. in cooperation with MIT's Department of Ocean Engineering, is roughly three feet long. It consists of a series of lined actuators, a spring-wound exoskeleton, flexible lycra skin, and a rigid caudal fin. Modeled after a pike, its flow-foil mechanism "flaps" to create vortices that produce jets to propel it efficiently.
A microprocessor housed inside the head provides the interface between control electronics and the Dart's body. The software, designed to allow rapid development of embedded routines, lets the driver dictate all swimming, starting, and turning parameters from an off-board computer via a graphical interface.
These swimmers can covertly gather intelligence close to shore. Their fishlike locomotion will reduce power requirements, make detection more difficult, and facilitate escape. On radar and sonar they will look very much like ordinary fish, particularly after "stealth" surfaces appear to outsmart reflected acoustic and electromagnetic waves.
For commercial and research use, where negotiation of hostile environments is essential, they can navigate intricate structures. For harbor cleaning this will help find hazardous materials. In mining, swimming prospectors will prowl far larger areas than human crews in submarines can. Exploring the deep ocean will be open to tough, independent robo-swimmers which can monitor for long times the countless valleys, caverns and geothermal vents we have only begun to fathom.
Fetchers—Counter Mine Intelligence
These offer a new approach to a global plague—the mines left behind in wars. A team of low-cost, robotic mine hunters can provide rapid and complete coverage of a mine field. A swarm of robots will ultimately be capable of cooperatively clearing a field of land mines under the supervision of a single operator.
Designed for low-cost duplication, because they can make mistakes and trigger the mines, these robots are just a few years from deployment. Already they have successfully detected, retrieved, and safely deposited munitions in the real world, visiting areas replete with unfavorable obstacles, terrain slopes, and poor traction.
There are common problems that will arise whenever robot teams do a job. How can a lightly trained technician operate such a complex system? How can the robots cooperate with one another to perform the task most effectively? IS Robotics' Fetch II robots perform their tasks autonomously but with the supervision of a single operator. Learning, "behavior-based" software keeps track of what the robots are doing and anticipates problems for the human. Without explicit instruction, this software mediates robot-robot interference within the swarm and supports cooperation among them.
Terminator...?
The above military 'bots snoop more than they fight. It does not take much imagination to see that modern tanks, outfitted with omnidirectional sensors in many frequencies, assisted by smart software and fast chips, could make their way through a future battleground without humans aboard. Current Pentagon plans are for combat units to have robot complements making up less than ten percent of the "troop" strength.
How good can they become? Much science fiction features fighting machines of the future outwitting human antagonists, and even cyborged people with formidable abilities of their own.
Perhaps this could happen, as munitions become smarter and warfare more mechanized. The Terminator robot of the science fiction films was a marvel of untiring ability, though at present utterly unrealistic. Just imagine what power source could run a Schwarzenegger-sized machine that can fight for even the duration of a two-hour film; lithium-ion batteries won't do it.
Experts like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology, have told the Pentagon that a true robot that moves, thinks and fights like a soldier will not appear on battlefields for another 30 years. Today's best attempt is a boxy prototype on treads, with a Cyclops eye. Its right arm is a gun and its left is an all-purpose tool that can open doors, lift blocks and cut holes. Told to fire, it locates, identifies and then quickly shoots a Pepsi can ten meters away.
Of course, it will be quite a while before a shooter robot gets an order to find, identify and kill a human enemy all on its own. For now, we get good performance by specializing machines. We have scouts that can prowl buildings, caves and tunnels. Others drone overhead, staying patiently aloft for tens of h
ours. Big haulers carry tons of weapons and gear, while others scout and report back. Others will endlessly follow their rounds on security watch, often in the dark since they can see by infrared. More savvy types will sneak behind enemy lines, eavesdrop, even conduct psychological war—making the enemy always look over his shoulder at every odd sound or movement wears him down.
But the need for an all-purpose machine will persist. Robot intelligence is increasing, as chips shrink and software gets smarter. Perception is the fulcrum of improvement. With a bit more progress, quarter-ton trucks will have robot drivers in combat zones. With digital road maps and Global Positioning satellites, robot convoys are only a decade away.
Today's robots work at the level of perception of not terribly bright mammals. In a generation, robots will work at the level of primates. At that level, it will be possible to let machines fight on their own. Monkey see, monkey shoot.
Still, many conflicts are messy matters of mud and blood. Machines cannot easily fight in trenches, snow, jungles or in house-to-house, hand-to-hand guerrilla conflicts. Robots will not fare well there, amid grit, smoke and rust.
So pressure will make them better—more rugged, savvy, perceptive. Doctrine always lags technology—the longbow, cannon, tank, plane and nuclear weapon all outran the strategies first used to employ them. So it will be with machines. Asimov's Three Laws will not apply to a combat robot, so they will need no tricky moral calculus. But they will need to tell friend from enemy, a surrendering foe from a fighting one, and enemies lying doggo. Our doctrines will change, too: will few casualties on one side make war with technologically inferior societies more tempting?
And what of the robots? If the machines are smart enough to outwit humans amid difficult terrain, they might very well have to be smart enough to question why they are doing it—a point seldom noted by film makers, who assume all advanced machines will still be absolutely obedient and have no desires other than perhaps malformed human motivations.
A common movie idea, which applies so broadly it includes many tales of alien contact, is The Menace Theme:
An intelligence we do not understand goes crazy (by our definitions, but maybe not its own). So it does evil things outside our moral code—mostly destruction of people and cities.
Robots are just one category of menace. Why do we like this idea so much that it has spawned hundreds of films?
Perhaps it's because we derive some unacknowledged gratification from watching the destruction. Many love Godzilla, even though it has a grudge against Tokyo. We watch Battlebots not out of love of robots, but of the smashups. We can wash our hands of any guilt feelings because they are just machines, after all; so are cities. Though they might get smart, they won't be human.
This extends to warfare. Robots can take the risks for us only in stylized, well-defined physical situations. The advanced nations will probably seize upon this in future, trying to make their conflicts resemble the Gulf Wars rather than Vietnam. Their antagonists will do the opposite, trying to pin down vulnerable infantry. The success of the NATO air war against the Serbs in 1998 shows that even messy conflicts can be won with high tech, especially if one attacks the obvious, fixed economic infrastructure rather than only troops in the field.
Robots will make these contrasts ever greater. We will always see men with guns and bombs seeking power, but as the technological gap between societies widens further, such groups will have to resort to terrorism (which itself gets ever more complex and technological) to make their bloody points. Against them will stand robots of ever-greater sophistication, patience, savvy and strength. Under enemy fire they will haul ammo, reconnoiter, search buildings, find the wounded.
They will have many shapes—crawlers like caterpillars or cockroaches, heavy assault craft like tanks or tractors, fliers looking like hummingbirds, or even "smart dust" swarms of robo-insects. Some will resemble animals and insects, to escape notice. Others will intentionally look bizarre, to frighten or intimidate. Few will be able to pass as human, even at a distance and at night, for quite a while.
Their inner minds will be odd, stylized, but steadily improving. We may come to see these metallic sentinels as our unique heroes, the modern centurions. The other side will see them as pure, walking terrors, killing whatever romance might still be left in war.
Or perhaps not. For we do have some historical precedent to instruct us. Medieval warfare in the centuries-long age of knights developed conventions quite unlike those we know in too many modern wars. Knights required a large support team, a hundred or more who carried out the heavy-lifting jobs in the logistics of horse and armor. These were in the army, but were kept outside the bounds of battle, and even if overrun were not killed – though their gear might get stolen. Knights themselves were fair game, but here, too, a thrifty ethics ruled. The were most often not killed but instead cornered or injured, then captured and ransomed for large sums; then they could fight again, for capture was no disgrace.
The prevailing rules were: fight only the fighters.
No one attacked the camps supporting the knights, or executed prisoners, since they could be ransomed or sold as slaves. To kill non-combatants was an atrocity, often punished. So until around 1650, European war was a conflict of big metal war machines that happened to have humans inside.
This suggests a strategy: Remove the humans, use robots in combat wherever possible, and knowingly drive the war culture toward a different moral standard. Use international standards, such as the rather outmoded Geneva Conventions, to create a new view. We could see the eventual evolution of robot warfare back to such a code. Of course, medieval times had plagues and starvation that ran alongside wars, but these messy side effects exist now, too; the four horsemen of apocalypse often ride together, led by War. A semi-medieval code would be in some ways superior to our current style of total war. The second half of the 20th Century saw common terror, atrocity and wholesale destruction, even in "advanced" nations like those in the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, that lasted a decade and slaughtered half a million.
A robot war culture does not have to be worse than our moral standards today. This may seem a radical conclusion, given the pervasive imagery of The Terminator, Robocop, etc. But it is important to believe that our future can be better than the worst case scenario. Indeed, it is essential.
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Columns
Jim Baen
Author: David Drake
Jim Baen called me on the afternoon of June 11. He generally phoned on weekends, and we'd usually talk a couple more times in the course of a week; but this was the last time.
In the course of the conversation he said, "You've got to write my obituary, you know." I laughed (I'll get to that) and said, "Sure, if I'm around—but remember, I'm the one who rides the motorcycle."
So I'm writing this. Part of it's adapted from the profile I did in 2000 for the program book of the Chicago Worldcon at which Jim was Editor Guest of Honor. They cut my original title, which Jim loved: The God of Baendom. I guess they thought it was undignified and whimsical.
The title was undignified and whimsical. So was Jim.
James Patrick Baen was born October 22, 1943, on the Pennsylvania - New York border, a long way by road or in culture from New York City . He was introduced to SF early through the magazines in a step-uncle's attic, including the November, 1957, issue of Astounding with The Gentle Earth by Christopher Anvil.
The two books Jim most remembered as formative influences were Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C Clarke. The theme of both short novels is that a youth from a decaying culture escapes the trap of accepted wisdom and saves his people despite themselves. This is a fair description of Jim's life in SF: he was always his own man, always a maverick, and very often brilliantly successful because he didn't listen to what other people thought.
For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard f
or people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were clear and in a variety of common formats.
While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from Canada. By the time of Jim's death, the figure had risen to ten times that.
Jim didn't forget his friends. In later years he arranged for the expansion of Fire-Hunter so that he could republish it (as The Hunter Returns , originally the title of the Charles R Knight painting Jim put on the cover).
Though Clarke didn't need help to keep his books in print the way Kjelgaard did, Jim didn't forget him either. Jim called me for help a week before his stroke, because Amazon.com had asked him to list the ten SF novels that everyone needed to read to understand the field. Against the Fall of Night was one of the titles that we settled on.
Jim's father died at age fifty; he and his stepfather didn't warm to one another. Jim left home at 17 and lived on the streets for several months, losing weight that he couldn't at the time afford. He enlisted in the army as the only available alternative to starving to death.
Jim spent his military career in Bavaria where he worked for the Army Security Agency as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, monitoring transmissions from a Soviet callsign that was probably a armored corps. One night he determined that 'his' Soviet formation was moving swiftly toward the border. This turned out to be an unannounced training exercise—but if World War III had broken out in 1960, Jim would've been the person who announced it.
Jim entered CCNY on the GI Bill and became a Hippie. Among other jobs he managed a Greenwich Village coffee house, sometimes acting as barker as well: 'Come in and see tomorrow's stars today!' None of the entertainers became tomorrow's stars, but that experience of unabashed huckstering is part of the reason that Jim himself did.
Jim's first job in publishing was as an assistant in the Complaints Department of Ace Books. He was good at it—so good that management tried to promote him to running the department. He turned the offer down, however, because he really wanted to be an SF editor.
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