Swords

Robot soldiers have long featured in movies (The Terminator, Robocop), but until recently have remained that, fiction. Enter the SWORDS.

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SWORDS or the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, is a weaponized mobile robot currently under development by Foster-Miller for the US Army. The robot is composed of a weapons system mounted on a Talon robot chassis. The current price of one unit is $230,000, but when it enters mass production the price is expected to drop to between $150,000 and $180,000. Even in cold economic terms, the SWORD is still cheaper to destroy than a soldier, who takes years and approx. US$50,000 to get to operational status. Sergeants cost even more, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention the soldier's family and friends. There is also the issue of a soldier's pension and burial, which raise the price of a human soldier even more.

Related Topics:
Talon robot - Chassis

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It is projected to be the first armed robotic vehicle to see combat, when 18 of the robots (dubbed "Robo-Soldier" by the US Army") are deployed in Iraq. It can travel almost anywhere, through sand, snow, underwater (out to depths of 100 feet), climb stairs (a feat for any modern robot) and all the while showing the operator, up to 1,000m away, the world in colour, black and white, infrared, and night vision. It can run off lithium-ion batteries for a maximum of 7 days inderpendantly before needing recharging.

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There are a variety of different weapons that can be placed on the SWORD; M16, 5.56mm SAW M249, 7.62mm M240, .50 cal M2 machine gun, a six barrelled 40mm grenade launcher or quad 66mm M202-A1 anti-tank rocket launcher.

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On the firing range, these two-foot little high robots are lethal. With an efficiency that a human could never replicate, the SWORDS are the snipers motto, "one shot, one kill". The robot is not autonomous, but instead has to be controlled by a soldier using a small console to remotely direct the device and fire its weapons. Foster-Miller are currently at work on a "Gameboy" style controller with virtual-reality goggles for future operators.

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