I just saw an interesting article that Sony is now selling Robot Dogs!!!
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2308814,00.html
While the AI and motor skills of the robot dog are (presumably) crude, the
story indicates that it has the capacity to learn from its environment. Also
the small size surprised me. This may cause me to reevaluate my ideas on
robots.
It certainly got me thinking about robots for DS2/SG2.
Possible uses with limited AI: Mine detectors Barrier breaching (razorwire,
mines, etc.)
Mobile mines
Scout/Forward Observer
Communications relay
Decoy
ECM
Beacon (homing beacon for artillery/artillery/missiles)
Possible uses with advanced AI:
Sniper
Battle robot
Saboteur
Not dogs, but for robot/automated gun house rules, check out the SG2
section of my webpage. (see sig for URL)
I've got rules for Aliens-style fixed 'sentry' guns, and the related
mobile gun platforms - the computer game XCom's 'Heavy Weapon
Platforms'.
They're all treated as 'Semi-Autonomous Combat Systems" (or SACS). Left
on
'auto-fire' mode, they engage the nearest eligible enemy target at the
end
of the round - eligibility is determined by weapon type mounted.
SACS can also be datalinked to a firing squad or vehicle. They are activiated
by the firing squad, and simply add their firepower die to the squad's fire.
SACS can also be activated on their own, just as with any squad or
vehicle. Check the rules out - they work well, I think. (They playtested
well, anyway.)
Haven't done FMA mods for the SACS yet - I'll have to once the firing
rules for FMA are finalized. The activation rules (which are the important
part) should port over no problem.
Well, I do know that right now robots can be used for ambushing tanks. They
can roll out, wait for weeks and hit anything crossing an area of the road or
terrain they cover. I think the robot I'm talking about is a Fireant or
something like that. Discovery Channel loves to show it in shows on military
hardware. It stnds to reason that a low-grade robot could be set up to
snipe at soft targets too. A tripod with servoes, a small logic unit, a
good multi-optic scope al lattached to a rifle and bingo - sort of like
a careful 'Sentry Gun'.
> From: "Bell, Brian K" <Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil>
> Also
One of the best set of rules I saw for robots on a battlefield were IIRC
published in White Dwarf many years ago. I recently saw them used in a short
tabletop game to great effect.
The main premise is that you program your robot with a series of instructions
in the form of a flowchart. The simplest sentry program being 'fire at
closest enemy' - which may well fire at the man hiding behind a wall
whilst the trooper behind him carefully aims with the rocket launcher:)
If you're interested in this kind of thing, there is a game that pits such
robots (created using your favourite language) against each other in an arena.
http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hbecker/pcrob.html
I used to play with those rules all the time. They slowed down play a bit at
first, but they were quite good at simulating the different levels of
programming. We once did away with al lthe limitations they suggest and
came up with seven page programs that would do everythign from prioritize by
race to determine threat level/priority by weapon.
Eli
> From: colin.plummer@theplanet.net
> arena.
Left
> on
> On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Eli Arndt wrote:
> Well, I do know that right now robots can be used for ambushing tanks.
They
> can roll out, wait for weeks and hit anything crossing an area of the
it's not quite that simple. tanks are easy to see - they are big, move
in fairly straight lines, are made of metal and generally have rather hot
exhausts somewhere. thus, you can detect them with optics, radar or infrared,
or set tripwires, pressure sensors, etc, and be able to find them well enough
to hit with a rocket (tanks are also quite large).
people are not so easy to hit. they don't show up on radar, and on optics
and millimetric radar are hard to distinguish from background - this is
the 'vision problem' of artificial intelligence research, and it's nowhere
near solved. you can probably pick people out in IR, but then you have to
filter out other sources of heat, and you're back to the vision problem.
tom
> At 12:02 AM 8/11/99 +0100, you wrote:
They
> can roll out, wait for weeks and hit anything crossing an area of the
As far as I can tell, the development of this kind of autonomous weapon is
basically what is delaying US signature to the land mine treaty... basically,
they want a replacement first, so they can sign it and then put
in an end-run that is possibly even more dangerous to civilians than
land mines (after all, once a land mine has gone off, it's no longer
dangerous).
Also, the Berlin Wall (in certain places) was protected (on the Soviet side)
by machineguns that were autonomously controlled (tripwires, as I understand
it).
*****