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A “robot soldier” armed with ammunition fighting hundreds of human soldiers in a war. This is not in a Spielberg movie but a plan that India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is working on to replace “humans” with “robot soldiers” in warfare.
Robots on battlefield, an interesting topic for science fiction, is being researched as a possible future means of fighting wars. Several countries have developed various types of robots. India is also joining the race.
“Whatever a soldier will do, a robot soldier should be able to do. That's the plan,” said Dr V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister and Secretary, Defence R&D. If the human is doing a search, the robot soldier will also be able to do that. If a human is engaged in a fire-fight, , the robot soldier could do that as well, he said.
“We are working on the project to have robot soldiers by 2020 or 2030,” he said at the Combat Vehicle Research and Development Centre in Avadi, a Chennai suburb. “A lot of effort and coordination among various agencies in the Defence need to work on this.”
The robot soldiers can do multiple tasks, including fighting humans, carrying loads of ammunitions and they can be controlled from remote locations. This would help the Defence in not deploying people in areas that is very difficult to access. The robot soldiers can also carry huge payloads for mine detection and surveillance, he said.
“We need to include a lot of artificial intelligence to avoid collision. Also, a lot of robot soldiers need to communicate with each other in the battlefield. Enormous amount of database and analytic intelligence is required for this,” he said.
Mules
In a different project, the DRDO is planning to replace the mule with “robot mules” to carry heavy loads to places such as Siachen.
The Indian Defence has nearly 10 lakh soldiers with two lakh more to be appointed in a year or two. Though not all of them could be replaced by robots, even a small percentage of people guarding the country in high altitude terrains such as Siachen being replaced by the robot soldiers could be of huge benefit to the Defence, said an official with the Defence research unit who did not want to be identified.
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