A robotics lecturer at the University of Sheffield was last month describing how autonomous robot weapons will populate future wars and that the military must be ready to face the challenge head on, in a talk to the Netherlands armed forces at The Hague next week in March.
The conference, Future Force 2020: Are We Prepared?, was organised by the Netherlands Defence Academy and the TNO (The Netherlands Organisation of Applied Scientific Research). Its focus was on future developments regarding the military profession, the development of military capabilities and the range of developments that directly affect the armed forces and the way they operate.
In his talk, `Waging war with Robots? Rights and Wrongs, Professor Sharkey pleaded for international consultation and discussion about the protection of civilians from armed robots before they are deployed autonomously.
He said: "By 2020 we could see robot fighting robot but it would be a mistake to think it will end there. People will always be involved in warfare and robot weapons could result in more civilians dying. The biggest danger is the autonomous robot – a robot without a human operator – and development is well under way."
"By 2020 the fighting machines may not be robots as they are commonly thought of. They will be programmed machines with many kinds of sensing that take on many shapes and forms. They could be in the form of multiple flying discs, like the BLU-108 submunition, dropped from the sky to pursue hot-bodied objects. Or they could be spherical to roll into bunkers and explode. Such autonomous weapons could be very dangerous for civilian populations if dropped in the wrong place."
Following on the military advantages of US robots in the Middle East, military powers throughout the world are set on acquiring or building their own robot weapons which can be of great benefit for saving lives in war. The majority of ground robots, for example, are used for surveillance and disposal. These will eventually be able to work autonomously to detect explosives at a short distance and then disrupt them or take the impact of the blast.
Robots could also be used to extract wounded soldiers from the battlefield and take them to a portable robotic operating theatre where they can be treated by a remote surgeon. The same technology could also be used to rescue and treat civilian casualties.
Autonomy is happening gradually with robot operators playing a lesser and lesser role until they are faded out. Armed robot planes operated by pilots at the Creech air force base in Nevada have been flying missions in the Middle East for years now and are responsible for the many decapitation raids in Northern Pakistan. The MQ-1 Predator has just passed the 500,000 mission hours milestone.
Autonomous ground vehicles are not far behind. The US military already have the capability of fielding very advanced autonomous ground robots. There are still a number of difficulties to figure out, such as how to protect them from being seized by enemy forces, but they are almost there.
However, Professor Sharkey maintains that no matter how sophisticated these autonomous robots become, there will be no way that any sensing system available can detect innocent people from combatants.
