Russkies in Oklahoma!

[Deadeye]

if the studies I worked on have any bearing its only a matter of time before intelligent processing is mixed with mobile and adaptive machinery and then you have terminator like machines, they already have robots working on the ground in Iraq and then humans are obsolete, just send in the machines,

Having added my share of gasoline to this conceptual bonfire, I'll now contribute an equal portion of water.

The researchers in the field constantly gloss over this distinction, but the difference between a drone with a human operator on the far end of a telelink and a true autonomous machine is absolutely vast. Those robots on the ground and UAVs in the air in Iraq have "eyes" but they can't "see." Their video feed is just an abstract array of pixels. Sophisticated programming can provide some rudimentary element analysis for their video feed, maybe on par with the ability of a housefly, but it will be ages before a machine can negotiate its environment with the sensory confidence of a drunken fratboy, much less that of a honed and wary warrior.

Interesting discussions - and at the risk of taking the thread even farther OT than it is, I'll submit two video links for your enjoyment/distress - whichever.

The first video shows a quadruped robot navigating both sheer ice and a jumble of cinder blocks. The second video shows how the vision system of Stanley works. (Stanley was the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous ground vehicle race).



Deadeye