{"id":418488,"date":"2021-10-15T12:23:58","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T10:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=418488"},"modified":"2021-10-15T12:26:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T10:26:08","slug":"robot-dogs-are-getting-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/418488-robot-dogs-are-getting-guns.html","title":{"rendered":"Robot dogs are getting guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quadrupedal robot showcased during the Association of United States Army’s 2021 annual conference earlier this week came fitted with a gun.<\/p>\n

The Sword Defence Systems’ Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR) is designed to be compatible with various robotic platforms.<\/p>\n

In this instance, it was mounted on one of Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 units, a quadrupedal unmanned vehicle that resembles a dog.<\/p>\n

Sword says the gun can precision fire up to 1,200m using a 6.5mm Creedmoor cartridge, and can also take the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge, with a magazine offering capacity for 10 rounds.<\/p>\n

It boasts a 30x optical zoom thermal camera for targeting capabilities in the dark.<\/p>\n

The gun’s operator can load and safe it from a distance, clear malfunctions, and unload the platform before recovery.<\/p>\n

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While it’s unclear if there are any plans to use this combination in the field, Ghost’s quadrupedal robots are already being tested by the US military.<\/p>\n

The Vision 60 can carry out tasks such as remote inspection, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, mapping, distributed communications, and persistent security.<\/p>\n

The Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida uses Ghost’s semi-autonomous quadrupedal robots in regular operations, including patrolling the base’s perimeter and navigating areas that “aren’t desirable for human beings and vehicles”.<\/p>\n

The gradual development of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) like Ghost has showcased has sparked fears over a rise in “killer robots<\/a><\/strong>“.<\/p>\n

One of the world’s most well-known manufacturers of quadrupedal robots, Boston Dynamics, has a strict policy against weaponising its machines, including the popular Spot robot.<\/p>\n

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Now read: The tech saving South Africa’s rhinos<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sword Defence Systems’ Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle can precision fire up to 1,200m and is designed to be compatible with various robotic platforms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":418534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9531,73330,73338,73334,15181,73336,73332,32720,33324],"class_list":["post-418488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-boston-dynamics","tag-ghost-robotics","tag-lethal-autonomous-weapon-systems-laws","tag-robot-dogs","tag-robotics","tag-special-purpose-unmanned-rifle-spur","tag-sword-defence-systems","tag-us-army","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418550,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418488\/revisions\/418550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}