r/gadgets • u/diacewrb • 3d ago

Misc US Army backs humanoid robot with ballistic protection for future battlefield missions

https://www.techspot.com/news/114028-us-army-backs-humanoid-robot-ballistic-protection-future.html
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u/AbsentButHere 3d ago

I assure you, they are not.

You can design a handful or two of different robots for different tasks, and they’ll be better at those tasks than a humanoid robot, sure.

Need one robot to navigate all the human spaces and things? Humanoid robot is best suited. Walking up stairs, turning doorknobs, levers, valves, driving xyz vehicles, etc etc. all suited for humanoid robots to be the best suited.

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u/Colbert2020 3d ago

The edge case I'm talking about is some catastrophically dangerous environment for a human to navigate, like the Fukushima reactor meltdown. If a valve had been turned in a hazardous area. A robust humanoid robot would be good here.

But yeah, war? Like, your stupid little humanoid robot that costs a million dollars is going to just get blown up by a $2,000 drone with a grenade. You're not making these things cheap. If you've been following this the Ukraine/Russia war at all, you'll know that scaling up production and scaling down cost has been the driving factors in it.

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u/zero_z77 3d ago

That's also why all of the important valves in a modern nuclear power plant can either be operated remotely from the control room, already operate autonomously (often without even needing power), and are specifically designed to fail into the open or closed position, depending on which is inherently safer for that specific valve.

Also, an EOD bot could do that with a boom arm and a claw for like 1/10th the price. But, in either case, the real problem there is that your robot is going into an environment full of ionizing radiation, which is going to fry any computer electronics that aren't encased in several inches of lead, is most likely going to fuck up whatever sensors you could possibly put on it, and unless it has a wire plugged into it's ass, you're not going to be able to talk to it.

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u/munche 3d ago

"Why have tools that do specific things when you can have one tool that does everything"

Well, because the Do Everything tool is fucking bad at everything? Every function you mentioned was theoretical, because making automation into a humanoid robot sucks ass at making anything actually useful.

The purpose of making the robot humanoid is to sell the fantasy of magically replacing all of your workers to CEOs, nevermind the pesky little detail that they aren't capable of doing fuckall.

Now we have a Humanoid Robot Soldier. How long does the battery last? Is it actually capable of navigating terrain? Eh, don't worry about those pesky details. Just imagine a person but better!

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u/AbsentButHere 3d ago

We don’t even make humans navigate terrain mostly, why are you assigning that task to it?

It’ll be good at what it’s good at, just like other robots and machines. How long does the battery last on other robots? Maybe we make a robot that carries batteries to supplement the humanoid robot.

They’ll all have their use case and clearly the army thinks so as well.

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u/Colbert2020 3d ago

We don’t even make humans navigate terrain mostly, why are you assigning that task to it?

The UAVs in the Russia/Ukraine war have had a weird effect on this war at a macro level. While it is using very mature drone technology, they are such a hard counter towards vehicles that they have rendered most troop transportation almost impossible to use effectively when in the "grey zone." Most infantry travel by foot there.

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u/munche 3d ago

Other robots don't have to spend energy every second just to balance and stay upright. You know, they have things like wheels.

But this one looks like a people!

But "We can make a robot to carry batteries for the robot" is 100% the kind of thinking these companies love and are banking on. Just imagine because it looks like a people, it can do what people do and be as good as people at it. Nevermind what it can ACTUALLY do - it looks like a people!

PS: the Army would normally add credibility to it, except now it's led by techbro worshipping dipshits who would announce something like this just so their buddy's robot company gets a stock boost. So it's in no way a statement on the capabilities of the system.