Former Health Minister Of Finnland Dr. Rauni Kilde: MIND CONTROL (Video)

Start watching from 03:50 into the video.

For my German speaking readers: The translation is terrible, but still better than nothing.

Related info:

Former Royal Navy Microwave Weapons Expert And UK Intelligence Services Agent Dr. Barrie Trower: Dangers And Lethality Of Microwave Technology (Video – 2:19:36)

Former Royal Navy Microwave Weapons Expert: NWO TECHNOLOGY UPDATE – Deadly Mobile Phones & The Worst Genocide Ever Committed – The Dangers Of Wi-Fi To Women And Children (Video)



YouTube

7 Technologies That Will Make It Easier For The Next President To Hunt And Kill You (Wired)

7 Technologies That Will Make It Easier for the Next President to Hunt and Kill You (Wired, Nov 6, 2012):

Robotic assassination campaigns directed from the Oval Office. Cyber espionage programs launched at the president’s behest. Surveillance on an industrial scale. The White House already has an incredible amount of power to monitor and take out individuals around the globe. But a new wave of technologies, just coming online, could give those powers a substantial upgrade. No matter who wins the election on Tuesday, the next president could have an unprecedented ability to monitor and end lives from the Oval Office.The current crop of sensors, munitions, control algorithms, and data storage facilities have helped make the targeted killing of American adversaries an almost routine affair. Nearly 3,000 people have been slain in the past decade by American drones, for instance. The process will only get easier, as these tools of war become more compact, more powerful, and more precise. And they will: Moore’s Law applies in the military and intelligence realms almost as much as it does in the commercial sphere.

For decades, political scientists have wrung their hands about an “Imperial Presidency,” an executive branch with powers far beyond its original, Constitutional limits. This new hardware and software could make the old concerns look more outdated than horses and bayonets, to coin a phrase. Here are seven examples.

Defense Department To Further Militarize US Law Enforcement With Hundreds Of Military Robots

Defense Department to Further Militarize U.S. Law Enforcement With Hundreds of Military Robots (The Intel Hub, April 10, 2012):

Last year I reported on the Pentagon’s 1033 Program, wherein local law enforcement agencies can obtain surplus military hardware through a website, only having to pay to pick up the equipment.

Now, according to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), law enforcement will be even further militarized through the use of hundreds of military robots acquired by the Department of Defense over the past decade.

According to the head of the eastern team of DLA’s disposition services office, Dan Arnold, the older and more heavily used items will likely be robots for explosive ordnance disposal and surveillance, although some of the hardware is nearly brand new and never been deployed overseas.

According to National Defense, Arnold said to the attendees of the GovSec conference in Washington, D.C., that these robots are just one instance of the surplus equipment that will likely become available as the conflict in Afghanistan supposedly winds down.

Read moreDefense Department To Further Militarize US Law Enforcement With Hundreds Of Military Robots

Robot Destroyed Within 2 Hours In Fukushima Reactor No. 2

Robot destroyed within 2 hours in reactor 2 (Fukushima Diary, April 7, 2012):

Following up this article..73Sv/h in container vessel

In this level of radiation, even a disaster dealing robot is collapsed within less than 2 hours.
In Fukushima plants, robot called Quince is used, which is developed by Chiba institute of technology and Tohoku university. Assistant professor Mizutani from Tohoku university states,
“The bottle neck to develop a robot for radioactive circumstances is the semiconductor. Semiconductor is extremely sensitive for radiation. Semiconductor parts of robot used in space are shielded by lead, which is against gamma ray, but lead can’t be used for Quince because it kills cavalry.Technical specification requires Quince to stand only over 3Sv/h. In total, it’s just over 100Sv.

With this level of the specification, Quince can’t last longer than 2 hours in reactor2. If it’s 3Sv/h to stand, Quince can’t last longer than 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Read moreRobot Destroyed Within 2 Hours In Fukushima Reactor No. 2

Russian Mogul Dmitry Itskov’s Avatar Project For Immortality: Plant Our Brains in Robots, Keep Them Alive Forever


YouTube

Russian Mogul’s Plan: Plant Our Brains in Robots, Keep Them Alive Forever (Wired, Feb. 29, 2012):

The Pentagon’s new Avatar project, unveiled by Danger Room a few weeks back, sounds freaky enough: Soldiers practically inhabiting the bodies of robots, who’d act as “surrogates” for their human overlords in battle.

But according to Dmitry Itskov, a 31-year-old Russian media mogul, the U.S. military’s Avatar initiative doesn’t go nearly far enough. He’s got a massive, sci-fi-esque venture of his own that he hopes will put the Pentagon’s project to shame. Itskov’s plan: Construct robots that’ll (within 10 years, he hopes) actually store a human’s mind and keep that consciousness working. Forever.

“This project is leading down the road to immortality,” Itskov, who founded New Media Stars, a Russian company that runs several online news outlets, tells Danger Room. “A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don’t want to die.”

Itskov’s project, also called “Avatar,” actually precedes the Pentagon’s. He launched the initiative a year ago, but recently divulged more details to a group of futurists — including Ray Kurzweil — at a three-day conference, called Global Future 2045, held in Moscow.

Read moreRussian Mogul Dmitry Itskov’s Avatar Project For Immortality: Plant Our Brains in Robots, Keep Them Alive Forever

A Red License Plate In Nevada Means The Driver Is A Robot!

Starting March 1st, A Red License Plate in Nevada Means the Driver is a Robot! (Singularity Hub, Feb. 22, 2012):

An extended campaign in Nevada by Google has led to a new host of provisions which will allow automated cars to legally drive in the state. Starting March 1st, 2012 innovators like Google can officially apply for a new kind of robot driver’s license that will give them permission to openly test their cars on the road. Automated vehicles will be able to travel the same streets and highways as human drivers, with only a red license plate marking them as robots. Once research on those automated cars is complete (which may take years), the Nevada Department of Motorized Vehicles will issue them a neon green license plate – an indication that the robot drivers are good to go. Google, whose robotic Prius cars have already driven 200,000+ miles in California quasi-legally, will undoubtedly take full advantage of Nevada’s openness and further develop their technology for general use. Just as important, other states like Hawaii, Florida, and Oklahoma may follow Nevada’s example, paving the way for robot cars to operate all across the United States.

Read moreA Red License Plate In Nevada Means The Driver Is A Robot!

Humans Lose, Robots Win in Pentagon’s New Defense Budget

Humans Lose, Robots Win in New Defense Budget (Wired, Jan. 26, 2012):

The big loser in the Pentagon’s new budget? Ordinary human beings.

About 80,000 Army soldiers and 20,000 Marines are getting downsized. Half of the Army’s conventional combat presence in Europe is packing up and ending its post-Cold War staycation. Replacing them, according to the $613 billion budget previewed by the Pentagon on Thursday: unconventional special-operations forces; new bombers; new spy tools; new missiles for subs; and a veritable Cylon army of drones.

Read moreHumans Lose, Robots Win in Pentagon’s New Defense Budget

‘RoboCop’ Guards To Patrol South Korean Prisons

Robot guards with sensors to detect abnormal behaviour will soon begin patrolling South Korean prisons to ease the burden on their human counterparts, researchers said on Thursday.


Prison guard robot: Three robots will be tested at a correctional facility in the southeastern city of Pohang next March when development is completed Photo: EPA

‘RoboCop’ guards to patrol South Korean prisons (Telegraph, Nov. 24, 2011):

A group of scientists has developed the robot warders under a one billion won (£546,000) project organised by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

The robots – 1.5 metres (five feet) high and running on four wheels – will mostly be used at night.

They can connect prisoners with officers through a remote conversation function, according to a statement from the Asian Forum for Corrections (AFC), a South Korea-based group of researchers in criminality and prison policies.

Read more‘RoboCop’ Guards To Patrol South Korean Prisons

Video of Packbot Cleaning Reactor 3’s 1st Floor In Extremely High Radiation – 620 Millisieverts/Hr AFTER Cleaning! (Video)

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Video of Packbot Cleaning Reactor 3’s 1st Floor in Extremely High Radiation (EX-SKF, Nov. 5, 2011):

Why? Because TEPCO is going to send carbon-based workers to install the gas management system to purify the gas coming from inside the Containment Vessel.

Utterly meaningless endeavor as far as I am concerned. What good would cleaning the gas in the Containment Vessel do, when just outside the CV you measure 620 millisieverts/hr radiation? Something more deadlier than xenon and krypton is outside the CV, and the company is willing to risk both non-carbon based worker (Packbot) and carbon-based co-workers in order to keep up the appearance that everything is under control at the plant.

Nonetheless, here’s the effort by Packbot on November 2, when it removed the junk out of the way, as released by TEPCO on November 5. Actually, TEPCO used 3 Packbots on November 2 and 3 for the work, according to Jiji Tsushin (11/5/2011):


YouTube Added: 05.11.2011

You can also see the “before and after” photos in TEPCO’s handout for the press on November 5. From that handout, here’s the radiation on the 1st floor where Packbot had to work to prepare for the gas management system (north-east corner of the 1st floor):

Read moreVideo of Packbot Cleaning Reactor 3’s 1st Floor In Extremely High Radiation – 620 Millisieverts/Hr AFTER Cleaning! (Video)

Technology Giant Foxconn To Replace Workers With 1 Million Robots In 3 years

Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years (Xinhua, July 29, 2011):

Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.

The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.

The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.

Read moreTechnology Giant Foxconn To Replace Workers With 1 Million Robots In 3 years

Fukushima: ‘Warrior’ Robot Vacuums Reactor 3 Floor, Radiation Still Very High

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: “Warrior” Robot Vacuumed Reactor 3 Floor, Radiation Still Very High (Ex-SKF, July 2, 2011):

Yomiuri Shinbun reports that the “Warrior” robot from iRobot went inside the reactor building for the Reactor 3 to vacuum the highly radioactive (or so TEPCO thought) sands accumulated on the floor right off the truck entrance.

It completed the task, braving the high radiation (more than 100 millisieverts/hour in some spots) on July 1. It took the robot 5 hours to collect dust and sand in 3 200-liter containers.

Unfortunately, the radiation level in the area only went down by 10 to 20 millisieverts/hour, and TEPCO is considering laying down the steel plates on the floor to see if they block the radiation.

See “Warrior” in action, as videoed by the fellow iRobot “Packbot”, which was then screen-captured by TEPCO on a notebook PC screen:


Cleanup Work by iRobot Warrior in Unit 3 Reactor Building at Fukushima Daiichi Power Station

The Fukushima Fuku-Ups Continue: Robot Fail, HoverDrone Fail, Water Decon Fail – OK for Ft Calhoun Spent Fuel Dry Cask To Be Dunked

Fukushima Fuku-Ups Continue (Asian-Week, June 24, 2011):

AP reports that
the Japanese have finally brought out their own robots instead of the military-strength Roombas. Well, the Quince robot built by Chiba Institute of Technology specifically for nuclear disasters was sent to unit 2 to have a peek at the radioactive stew in the basement. but got stuck at a staircase landing. Plus the cable to drop a gauge into the basement didn’t work either. The T-hawk hover drone gizmo they got from the US military also landed or landed or crashed depending on who was writing on the roof of Unit 2, the building that still has a roof. It’s on its side, so I’d call that a crash.

What somebody called their try at making Fukushima Springs Bottled Water failed when their spectacular hacked together cesium filter essentially bottled up more radioactive bad crap to render the filter too hot for workers to even remove after a matter of hours when they were planning on the water being much less severely contamainated so that it was supposed to run for a month. That’s a problem because they can’t dump any more water to cool things if they don’t have any place to put it, and it goes into the ocean.

Read moreThe Fukushima Fuku-Ups Continue: Robot Fail, HoverDrone Fail, Water Decon Fail – OK for Ft Calhoun Spent Fuel Dry Cask To Be Dunked

Military Engineering Firm Boston Dynamics Gets DARPA Contracts For Cheetah and Atlas Robots

Boston Dynamics, the military engineering firm best known for its four-legged BigDog robot, has been awarded two contracts by DARPA to develop a pair of new robots: an agile humanoid called ATLAS and a speedy, animal-inspired quadruped called CHEETAH.

ATLAS looks like a headless Terminator, with a torso, two legs and two arms, all controlled by an array of servos, pistons and robotic muscles. His killer feature is lifelike agility, and will be able to tackle difficult terrain by walking upright, sidling through narrow passages and using his hands for balance, support and grip.

“ATLAS will walk like a man, using a heel-to-toe walking motion, long strides and dynamic transfer of weight on each step,” explains Rob Playter, the ATLAS principal investigator and VP of Engineering at Boston Dynamics. Dynamic agility systems will allow the robot to use his own momentum to throw or swing himself across gaps and between handholds. It’s not entirely clear why he lacks a head.


CHEETAH, on the other hand, is about pure velocity. Named after the planet’s fastest land animal, Boston’s big-cat-inspired robot will sprint faster than the quickest human athletes. It doesn’t sacrifice maneuverability though, as the robot is being designed to take tighter turns so it can zigzag to chase and evade. “It will accelerate rapidly, starting and stopping on a dime,” says Boston Dynamics in a statement.

Read moreMilitary Engineering Firm Boston Dynamics Gets DARPA Contracts For Cheetah and Atlas Robots

War Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat

‘War would be a lot safer’, …



An armed robot, called Maars, maneuvering at a training site at Fort Benning, Ga.

FORT BENNING, Ga. — War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots.

And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots — none of them particularly human-looking — are being designed to handle a broader range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries.

In a mock city here used by Army Rangers for urban combat training, a 15-inch robot with a video camera scuttles around a bomb factory on a spying mission. Overhead an almost silent drone aircraft with a four-foot wingspan transmits images of the buildings below. Onto the scene rolls a sinister-looking vehicle on tank treads, about the size of a riding lawn mower, equipped with a machine gun and a grenade launcher.

Three backpack-clad technicians, standing out of the line of fire, operate the three robots with wireless video-game-style controllers. One swivels the video camera on the armed robot until it spots a sniper on a rooftop. The machine gun pirouettes, points and fires in two rapid bursts. Had the bullets been real, the target would have been destroyed.

Read moreWar Machines: Recruiting Robots for Combat

Google Tests Cars That Steer THEMSELVES – In Busy Traffic


Google takes over the roads: The test car has been sent out with a team of engineers in case of technical problems

Google is driving head first into more controversy today after revealing it has been testing its innovative hands-free car technology on California’s roads.

For it wasn’t talking about keeping hands off the phone or the GPS – alarmingly, it was testing cars driven with hands off the steering wheel.

Road safety experts were raising questions about the robot-driven cars after Google revealed it has logged over 140,000 miles around the state – almost all of them on auto-pilot.

The specially adapted Toyota Prius automated cars drove from Google’s HQ in Mountain View, Northern California, down the famously scenic Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica.

They also drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and down San Francisco’s Lombard Street, one of the nation’s steepest and curviest roads.

The computer giant boasts that seven cars, which have funnel-like cylinders on the roof that acts as the vehicle’s ‘eye’, have driven 1,000 miles at a time without any hands-on human input.

Read moreGoogle Tests Cars That Steer THEMSELVES – In Busy Traffic

South Korea Deploys Killer Robots Along Border With North Korea

South Korea has deployed sentry robots capable of detecting and killing intruders along the heavily-fortified border with North Korea, officials said on Tuesday.

north-korean-soldiers
North Korean soldiers look across the Demilitarized Zone towards South Korea Photo: EPA

Two robots with surveillance, tracking, firing and voice recognition systems were integrated into a single unit, a defence ministry spokesman said.

The 400 million won (£220,000) unit was installed last month at a guard post in the central section of the Demilitarised Zone which bisects the peninsula, Yonhap news agency said.

It quoted an unidentified military official as saying the ministry would deploy sentry robots along the world’s last Cold War frontier if the test was successful.

The robot uses heat and motion detectors to sense possible threats, and alerts command centres, Yonhap said.

If the command centre operator cannot identify possible intruders through the robot’s audio or video communications system, the operator can order it to fire its gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher.

Read moreSouth Korea Deploys Killer Robots Along Border With North Korea

Future Big Brother Police State: Meet the UK’s Armed Surveillance Robot Drones

drones-will-kill-us-all

Police forces all over the UK will soon be able to draw on unmanned aircraft from a national fleet, according to Home Office plans. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers, and will be in place in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Surveillance is only the start, however. Military drones quickly moved from reconnaissance to strike, and if the British police follow suit, their drones could be armed — but with non-lethal weapons rather than Hellfire missiles.

The flying robot fleet will range from miniature tactical craft such as the miniature AirRobot being tested by Essex police, to BAE System’s new HERTI drone as flown in Afghanistan. The drones are cheaper than police helicopters — some of which will be retired — and are as wide as 12m in the case of HERTI.

Watching events on the ground without being able to act is frustrating. Targets often got away before an unarmed drone could summon assistance. In fact, in 2000 it was reported that an airborne drone spotted Osama bin Laden but could do nothing but watch him escape. So the RAF has been carrying out missions in Afghanistan with missile-armed Reapers since 2007. From the ground these just look like regular aircraft.

The police have already had a similar experience with CCTV. As well as observing, some of these are now equipped with speakers. Pioneered in Middleborough, the talking CCTV allows an operator to tell off anyone engaging in vandalism, graffiti or littering.

Unmanned aircraft can also be fitted with speakers, such as the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), which could not only warn fly tippers that they were breaking the law but also be loud enough to drive them away.

The LRAD is a highly directional speaker made of a flat array of piezoelectric transducers, producing intense beam of sound in a 30-degree cone. It can be used as a loudhailer, or deafen the target with a jarring, discordant noise. Some ships now carry LRAD as an anti-pirate measure: It was used to drive off an attack on the Seabourn Spirit off Somalia in 2005.

LRAD makers American Technology prefer to call its product a device rather than a weapon, and use terms such as “deterrent tones” and “influencing behaviour.” Police in the US have already adopted a vehicle-mounted LRAD for crowd control, breaking up protests at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last year, although there have been warnings about the risk of hearing damage.

The LRAD has been tested on the Austrian S-100 unmanned helicopter, and the technology is ready if there is a police requirement.

But rather than just driving them away, a police drone should be able to stop fleeing criminals in their tracks. Helicopters already mount powerful searchlights, and strobe lighting capabilities can turn such systems into effective nonlethal weapons. High-intensity strobes can cause dizziness, disorientation and loss of balance making it virtually impossible to run away.

This effect was first harnessed in the “Photic Driver” made by British company Allen International in 1973. However, it has taken improvement in lighting technology (such as fast-switching Xenon lights) and an understanding of the physiology involved to make such weapons practical.

A “light based personnel immobilisation device” developed by Peak Beam Systems Inc has been successfully tested by the US military, and work to mount it on an unmanned helicopter in the States is under way.

This sort of light would be too dangerous for a manned aircraft because of the crew being affected. But an unmanned “strober” could be a literal crime stopper, and something we could see deployed within the next couple of years.

Even the smallest drones could be used for tactical police operations. As far back as 1972 the Home Office looked at model aircraft as an alternative to rubber bullets, literally flying them into rioters to knock them off their feet.

French company Tecknisolar Seni has demonstrated a portable drone armed with a double-barrelled 44mm Flash-Ball gun. Used by French special police units, the one-kilo Flash-Ball resembles a large calibre handgun and fires non-lethal rounds, including tear gas and rubber impact rounds to bring down a suspect without permanent damage — “the same effect as the punch of a champion boxer,” claim makers Verney-Carron.

However, last year there were questions over the use of Flash-Ball rounds by French police. Like other impact rounds, the Flash-Ball is meant to be aimed at the body — firing from a remote, flying platform is likely to increase the risk of head injury.

Another option is the taser. Taser stun guns are now so light (about 150 grams) that they could be mounted on the smaller drones. Antoine di Zazzo, head of SMP Technologies, which distributes tasers in France, says the company is fitting one to a small quad-rotor iDrone (another quad-rotor toy helicopter), which some have called a “flying saucer”.

Read moreFuture Big Brother Police State: Meet the UK’s Armed Surveillance Robot Drones

University of Maryland Develops Insect Terminators For US Military

The US Army granted engineers at the University of Maryland a 5 year, 10 million dollar contract to develop tiny micro air vehicles to be used in war zones.

They believe that these insect robots could save soldiers’ lives by assisting them with reconnaissance and surveillance in the most hostile environments.


Added: 13. December 2009

See also:

Pentagon’s Cyborg Insects All Grown Up (Wired)

The Pentagon’s battle bugs (Asia Times)

Lethal military robot warriors will get a guide to ethics

When and what to fire will be part of hardware and software ‘package’

robot-warrior
Lethal military robots are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ground-based robots like QinetiQ’s MAARS robot (shown here), are armed with weapons to shoot insurgents, appendages to disarm bombs, and surveillance equipment to search buildings. A Georgia Tech computer science professor is developing a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire.

Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield more every day. But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own?

Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an “ethical governor,” a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, “Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots,” comes out this month.

He argues not only can robots be programmed to behave more ethically on the battlefield, they may actually be able to respond better than human soldiers.

“Ultimately these systems could have more information to make wiser decisions than a human could make,” said Arkin. “Some robots are already stronger, faster and smarter than humans. We want to do better than people, to ultimately save more lives.”

Lethal military robots are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ground-based robots like iRobot’s SWORDS or QinetiQ’s MAARS robots, are armed with weapons to shoot insurgents, appendages to disarm bombs, and surveillance equipment to search buildings. Flying drones can fire at insurgents on the ground. Patriot missile batteries can detect incoming missiles and send up other missiles to intercept and destroy them.

Read moreLethal military robot warriors will get a guide to ethics

The Living Robot

Researchers have developed a robot capable of learning and interacting with the world using a biological brain.


Credit: Kevin Warkwick

Kevin Warwick’s new robot behaves like a child. “Sometimes it does what you want it to, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he says. And while it may seem strange for a professor of cybernetics to be concerning himself with such an unreliable machine, Warwick’s creation has something that even today’s most sophisticated robots lack: a living brain.

Life for Warwick’s robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. “It’s an innate response of the neurons,” says Warwick, “they try to link up and start communicating.”

For the next week the team fed the developing brain a liquid containing nutrients and minerals. And once the neurons established a network sufficiently capable of responding to electrical inputs from the electrode array, they connected the newly formed brain to a simple robot body consisting of two wheels and a sonar sensor.

Read moreThe Living Robot

Pentagon exploring robot killers that can fire on their own

“We are sleepwalking into a brave new world where robots decide who, where and when to kill,” said Noel Sharkey, an expert on robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield, England.


WASHINGTON — The unmanned bombers that frequently cause unintended civilian casualties in Pakistan are a step toward an even more lethal generation of robotic hunters-killers that operate with limited, if any, human control.

The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons.

“The trend is clear: Warfare will continue and autonomous robots will ultimately be deployed in its conduct,” Ronald Arkin, a robotics expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, wrote in a study commissioned by the Army.

“The pressure of an increasing battlefield tempo is forcing autonomy further and further toward the point of robots making that final, lethal decision,” he predicted. “The time available to make the decision to shoot or not to shoot is becoming too short for remote humans to make intelligent informed decisions.”

Read morePentagon exploring robot killers that can fire on their own

Fem-bot’s my love machine

A BOFFIN too busy to find real love has INVENTED his idea of the perfect woman – a female ROBOT.


Perfect couple … Le Trung with Aiko

Inventor Le Trung, 33, created Aiko, said to be “in her 20s” with a stunning 32, 23, 33 figure, shiny hair and delicate features.

She even remembers his favourite drink and does simple cleaning and household tasks.

“Fem-bot” Aiko, who has cost £14,000 to build so far, is a whizz at maths and even does Le’s accounts.

Le, a scientific genius from Brampton in Ontario, Canada, said he never had time to find a real partner so he designed one using the latest technology.

He said he did not build Aiko as a sexual partner, but said she could be tweaked to become one.


Odd pair … Le with his robot girlfriend

“Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm and reacting to touch as if she is playing hard to get or being straight to the point,” he said.

The former software programmer has taken out credit cards and loans, sold his car and spent his life savings on perfecting the machine.

“I want to make her look, feel and act as human as possible so she can be the perfect companion,” said Le.

The odd looking pair go out for drives together in the Canadian countryside, before sitting down at the dinner table, but Aiko never eats anything.

Le said: “So far she can understand and speak 13,000 different sentences in English and Japanese, so she’s already fairly intelligent.

“When I need to do my accounts, Aiko does all the maths. She is very patient and never complains.”

Read moreFem-bot’s my love machine

Pentagon hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that ‘won’t commit war crimes’

“It sends a cold shiver down my spine. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.”
___________________________________________________________________________

The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms.


The Pentagon aims to develop ‘ethical’ robot soldiers, unlike the indiscriminate T-800 killers from the Terminator films

The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately.

By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers.

A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions.

Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”

Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants.

Read morePentagon hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that ‘won’t commit war crimes’

A ‘Frankenrobot’ with a biological brain

PARIS (AFP) – Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

Related article: ‘Brain’ in a dish flies flight simulator

Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.

Read moreA ‘Frankenrobot’ with a biological brain

Military Recruits Thousands More Warbots for New Unmanned Surge

Dsc_0596_2

In December, after all the lawsuits, the private eyes and the backroom deals, iRobot finally wrestled away the biggest ground-robotics contract in military history from its former employee and his secret partner. This “unmanned surge” was worth up to $286 million and 3,000 machines. And it didn’t look like it would be topped any time soon.

But appearances can be deceiving in the world of military robots. Turns out, there’s been a second unmanned surge. And yesterday, iRobot’s rival, Foster-Miller, announced that it had won the contract to supply it.

The five-year deal is worth up to $400 million. And it will cover thousands of Talon bomb-handling robots and spare parts — maybe between 2,000 and 4,000 robots, F-M executive Bob Quinn tells Xconomy.

That would more than double the 2,000 Talons already in the field, finding and getting rid of improvised explosives. If all the robots are actually ordered under this “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contract, that is.

Once the absolute darling of military bomb squads, the rugged, easy-to-drive Talon now has a more serious competitor in iRobot’s upgraded Packbot. With the number of bombs dropping overall in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with a beefed-up rival, is there really room to double the number of Talon machines?

Read moreMilitary Recruits Thousands More Warbots for New Unmanned Surge