Marines training with Boston Dynamics robots

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Rather useful for the National Guard, wouldnā€™t you say? Local PDs too. Everyone needs a machine-gun armed robotic mule.

Oorah men! Today we pacify and hold the uncanny valley and every last one of its eerily demi-human residents!

Assisting you on this mission will be the unnervingly sophisticated LS3 tactical support system. In light of the unusual requirements of this combat environment, you have each been issued a ā€˜very, very digitalā€™ pattern camo uniform and 250 5.56x45 CGI-piercing rounds. Should you encounter fortified resistance, Michael Bay will be providing heavy fire support.

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Iā€™d be curious to know if (once they manage a few cost reductions, most likely) construction/demolition and disaster response would be interested. Moves across loose rubble markedly more easily than all but the heaviest tracked vehicles(which are both very expensive, very hard on paved roads, and present a serious squish risk in the case of buried survivors); but probably better than a human at carrying jackhammers/cutting torches/thermal cameras/exploratory ā€˜snakeā€™ cameras, that sort of thing.

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Yes, theyā€™re very interested. Wired carries a lot of news on these things.

Hereā€™s a cool new 4x4 from Romania - supposedly for emergency; but military applications are obvious

ā€œWeā€™d love a machine gun on it,ā€ says 1st Lt. Alex Hurran."

Why not a frikkenā€™ laser beam?

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Those are only for sharks. Duh.

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Iā€™d hotrod one of these into a self-propelled mortar bot. It trails the patrol by a little bit, and when the handler identifies something that needs to be blown up, he passes the coordinates to the bot. The bot knows where it is, it knows where the target is, it knows where the other elements of the patrol are. It checks for overhead clearance, moves to a clearing if it needs to, calculates the trajectory and plants its feet so as to aim the mortar tube in the appropriate direction. The handler spots the first round and the bot makes the necessary corrections. You could also use the mortar tube to launch a small UAV if you wanted a closer look at the target before blowing it up- but if the target is already shooting at you, you may decide to skip that step.

It would seem natural to get 2-10 depending on the size of the area you need to clear, and use them to set off IEDā€™s, landmines, etc. Morally better then letting someone get killed or injured. I just hope they are cheap enough that the higher ups allow that kind of usage.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Just donā€™t ask it for ā€œa shakeā€, and donā€™t mess with its kibble.

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