By This has actually been long in the making and personally I am not at all that impressed:
Security along the DMZ has gone high-tech, as South Korea has quietly installed a number of machine gun-armed robots to serve as the first line of defense against the potential advance of North Korean soldiers.
The stationary robots — which look like a cross between a traffic signal and a tourist-trap telescope — are more drone than Terminator in concept, operated remotely just outside the southern boundary of the DMZ by humans in a nearby command center.
Officials refuse to say how many or where the robots have been deployed along the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, but did say they were installed late last month and will be operated on an experimental basis through the end of the year.
South Korean military officials will then decide how many, if any, robots they want complementing the soldiers who man the area adjacent to the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ, which stretches 160 miles across the peninsula. [Stars & Stripes]
As the Stripes’ reporter mentioned these are not robots but just remotely controlled gun platforms. These are not replacing soldiers since a soldier has to operate the system. I actually wonder if it increases manpower needs by needing someone to do the operator level maintenance on these systems?
Anyway Samsung Techwin who developed the system provides the most telling comments in the article about why the system has been fielded:
“The robots are not being deployed to replace or free up human soldiers,” said Huh Kwang-hak, a spokesman for Samsung Techwin, the manufacturer of the SGR-1 robot. “Rather, they will become part of the defense team with our human soldiers. Human soldiers can easily fall asleep or allow for the depreciation of their concentration over time,” he said. “But these robots have automatic surveillance, which doesn’t leave room for anything resembling human laziness. They also won’t have any fear (of) enemy attackers on the front lines.”
So basically this guy is saying that these gun platforms are needed because ROK Army soldiers are lazy and will run from attackers? I tend to think it probably has more to do with subsidizing the Korean defense industry with a domestic defense product more than anything else.
She hasn’t seen...
3:05 am on July 14th, 2010 1
I think they should replace all the GI's with these robots. The replaced GI's can then be put into janitorial service for city of Seoul.
3:11 am on July 14th, 2010 2
GI Korea, I can understand your comment on that this just a way to subsidize the defense industries.
HOWEVER, considering what happens at DMZ, I think this is a good thing. I don't know if you've seen youtube video of this when it was under development but the highlight of it is its surveillance system, not the gun. People hear robot + gun and automatically assume its main job is to shoot but not with this one.
Once its camera is pointed in a direction, it picks out and draws a square around anything (or anyone) that moves. And we all know target acquisition is the key.
4:30 am on July 14th, 2010 3
It may also have the potential to lead to complacency.
4:39 am on July 14th, 2010 4
#3
True. But that happens over time anywhere.
7:03 am on July 14th, 2010 5
Perfect system for the gamer-generation Korean males doing their time on the Z.
7:35 am on July 14th, 2010 6
STOP CREEP! You have 30 seconds to comply.
8:09 am on July 14th, 2010 7
What a piece of junk.
I looked through the specs and, while it has some impressive targeting abilities in some aspects, there is no way it is going to find Sarah Conners.
I say set 'em on full auto and line 'em up across America's southern border.
10:15 am on July 14th, 2010 8
I like this idea. I can tell many of the posters are old timers cause you don't get the point. Its there for surveillance because you can enhance / augment a robots visual system quite easily. Much more difficult with humans because we need mobile battery packs and can't instantly have a computer analyze / record we're seeing for target acquisition / identification. Then the computer can do computer assisted targeting / tracking and adjust for environmental conditions (wind / rain) and distance.
And the biggest bonus is that the human operator isn't subjected to the stress of combat / fearing for your own life. To them its merely a video game, so your highly trained gunners don't suffer from a chance of getting shot / MEDEVACed or having mental illness / PTSD.
And you can always feed the video streams to a single command center that would allow the field commander a very accurate picture of the battle space.
10:37 am on July 14th, 2010 9
Keeps the guards from sleeping as well as lowering manpower costs and overall numbers.
I doubt the ROK's are overly concerned with stress and PTSD's.
11:19 am on July 14th, 2010 10
Considering how blistering hot and freezing cold DMZ gets, I say the guards welcome this change… Not that this will help reduce the # of human bodies on the DMZ that much…
#8, I agree with you. The point of this system is "surveillance".
12:34 pm on July 14th, 2010 11
Combat "stress" cause's lots of human failure to occur (combat judgment / fatigue). Remove this and you basically have a bunch of soldiers always making rational / trained decisions. Its the removal of the "fear of death" that would allow these to be super effective. One gets shot out and the guy just controls another.
Anyway yeah, its about the automated surveillance and the combined picture of the battle space.
12:48 pm on July 14th, 2010 12
I think the GI is afraid of getting fired and replaced by this wonder robot.
4:15 pm on July 14th, 2010 13
Other robots like this are in service all over borders of Israel, though I doubt some critics here will be saying the same thing to the Israeli's face.
Korea IS concerned with solving problems of soldiers' stress and PTSD. You actually need to have served the ROK military to perceive the change.
9:05 pm on July 14th, 2010 14
Of course, the system only if the Nork saboteurs don't get to the operators first, or if operators aren't dozing off or playing Starcraft II, or if the power is not cut accidentally or intentionally, or if the signals aren't jammed (EMP), or if the gunner decides he doesn't wanan fire on Norks because "they're his brothers".
One idea to solve the operator error issue would be to do something that is similar to what was done on the border: live stream the controls to anyone on a South Korean ISP (Block proxies). I wouldn't mind logging in to pick off some Nork scum in the early days of a war.
"Come into my parlor" said the spider to the fly.
9:19 pm on July 14th, 2010 15
We should name this robot, "Cho Seung-Hui".
11:12 pm on July 14th, 2010 16
lol at #15
11:42 pm on July 14th, 2010 17
Robocop or Skynet?
12:12 pm on July 15th, 2010 18
#15,
Stop being such a dork. Can't you see it's Johnny 5?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TBcQ8h_kXU