Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies

[dr. what]

<Makes lame 'I, for one, welcome our new robot zombie masters' joke>

It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an "external combustion chamber" burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.

The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.

Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.

In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through "foraging," despite the obvious military purpose.

[Samuel]

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

BS. The military isn't made of idiots- they won't use human corpses to power this thing. Besides, people have bones.

[Narkis]

The zombie robots look a lot like toy excavators. I'd be tempted to buy one for my kids, if I could.

[Invictus ChiKen]

My first response was "BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" a literal cry of shock.

Now I am somewhere between and damn that's neat.

[PeZook]

Now they just need to get the ability to build copies of themselves

[Darmalus]

If it could be small enough to help around a house or garage, or even a store, it would be awesome. A robot you can feed table scraps. I wonder how easy such a machine would be to keep clean and functional? I remember a few cooking accidents that were nightmares to clean up, and that was a few square inchest of burned residue.

[TheMuffinKing]

Thus we have the beginnings of the Death Force robots from M.D. Geist.

[PeZook]

It would be nice to have untill it malfunctions and eats your legs while you're asleep

[madd0ct0r]

there was a version of this a while ago - slug picker


found slugs in fields by IR, carried them back to the biotank, dropped them in and used the brew to charge up the slug picker's batteries.

the researchers said they'd picked slugs becuase they were squishy and not likely to get people upset.

ummm.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1542588.stm

[Samuel]

They made one that worked off flies as well.

[FSTargetDrone]

Meh, Fox [url=ttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533382,00.html]updated the article[/url] to something less silly:

Biomass-Eating Military Robot Is a Vegetarian, Company Says

Thursday, July 16, 2009

A steam-powered, biomass-eating military robot being designed for the Pentagon is a vegetarian, its maker says.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

But, contrary to reports, including one that appeared on FOXNews.com, the EATR will not eat animal or human remains.

Dr. Bob Finkelstein, president of RTI and a cybernetics expert, said the EATR would be programmed to recognize specific fuel sources and avoid others.

“If it’s not on the menu, it’s not going to eat it,” Finkelstein said.

“There are certain signatures from different kinds of materials” that would distinguish vegetative biomass from other material."

RTI said Thursday in a press release:

"Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone (Cyclone Power Technologies Inc.) has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips -- small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI."

EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone, of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an "external combustion chamber" burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.

The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.

Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.

In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through "foraging," despite the obvious military purpose.

As an slightly rhetorical aside, I've always been somewhat amused when "desecration of bodies" in wartime is mentioned as a crime. It's okay to blow apart an enemy in the course of making war, but "desecration" of someone's corpse is frowned upon.

[Mr Bean]

As an slightly rhetorical aside, I've always been somewhat amused when "desecration of bodies" in wartime is mentioned as a crime. It's okay to blow apart an enemy in the course of making war, but "desecration" of someone's corpse is frowned upon.

Would you might object if you knew your nation servicemen where taking the dead bodies of the enemy and cutting off their heads to decorate the front of their APC's?

Or would like the idea of it being OK to skin the dead bodies of the enemy to make covers for the artillery?

The Geneva conventions are set up so that if two nations go to war they fight in a certain way, under certain restrictions to make war as "humane" No deliberate targeting of civilians, caring for prisoners of war, heck taking POW's to begin with. How and when to surrender and not going the revenge route. IE surrendering but then continuing to resist via terrorist/guerrilla tactics. The Conventions are possibly a vain hope to make conventional wars possible but as clean as possible.

[Samuel]

Or would like the idea of it being OK to skin the dead bodies of the enemy to make covers for the artillery?

Obviouly we need to ink our trooper's skins so when the enemy uses the covers we can home in on their artillary. What is a good substance for this task?

[Pulp Hero]

Or would like the idea of it being OK to skin the dead bodies of the enemy to make covers for the artillery?

Obviouly we need to ink our trooper's skins so when the enemy uses the covers we can home in on their artillary. What is a good substance for this task?

Something IR that doesn't show up on the normal vision spectrum should do the trick nicely.

[K. A. Pital]

[HK-47] MEATBAGS [/HK-47]

[open_sketchbook]

I never understood that rules of warfare bullshit in the context of modern combat. Ever since we started fighting total wars I think we should have flushed that human rights crap. War is about winning and winning is about killing, maiming, terrifying and demoralizing your enemy by absolutely any means possible. Poisonous gas, bioweapons, incindiaries, mines, cluster bombs, unleashed upon anything that presents itself as a target in a warzone should be valid. Prisoners cost money to care for, so don't take any. It's war. There is no putting a pretty face on the deliberate and planned taking of human lives.

I think they ought to make this machine consume corpses because that would be utterly terrifying to an enemy and might make them do something stupid like run out to retrieve a body to prevent it's desecration. What does it matter anyway? Dead people aren't to likely to have an opinion regarding it, and once you're dead your body is just a hunk of flesh and bits anyway. If it might give us the advantage, I'd say go for it.

[FSTargetDrone]

Would you might object if you knew your nation servicemen where taking the dead bodies of the enemy and cutting off their heads to decorate the front of their APC's?

Or would like the idea of it being OK to skin the dead bodies of the enemy to make covers for the artillery?

I would object to any country's servicemember's body being abused, dead or alive. I didn't say I thought it was okay. I was just pointing out the moderately absurd notion that it needs to be clarified by the makers of this biomass-consuming bot that, no, surely we won't have it eating dead bodies!

I didn't like it when the Somali dragged around dead US troops and I wouldn't like it if it was done to anyone else, no matter who they were or where they are from. When one defiles a dead body, it's done for psychological reasons, it's done to show contempt, it's done for any number of reasons. I get that.

Clearly, I understand the notion behind respecting the dead and the distaste towards abuse of corpses. It's as much for the peace of mind of the individual's relatives as anything else.

That said, if only this planet full of savages were as concerned about the living as we were about the dead, perhaps we wouldn't be so eager to kill each other in the first place.

The Geneva conventions are set up so that if two nations go to war they fight in a certain way, under certain restrictions to make war as "humane" No deliberate targeting of civilians, caring for prisoners of war, heck taking POW's to begin with. How and when to surrender and not going the revenge route. IE surrendering but then continuing to resist via terrorist/guerrilla tactics. The Conventions are possibly a vain hope to make conventional wars possible but as clean as possible.

Yes, and all of this concerns the living. Admirable stuff. I was talking about corpses.

[Simon_Jester]

I never understood that rules of warfare bullshit in the context of modern combat. Ever since we started fighting total wars I think we should have flushed that human rights crap. War is about winning and winning is about killing, maiming, terrifying and demoralizing your enemy by absolutely any means possible. Poisonous gas, bioweapons, incindiaries, mines, cluster bombs, unleashed upon anything that presents itself as a target in a warzone should be valid. Prisoners cost money to care for, so don't take any. It's war. There is no putting a pretty face on the deliberate and planned taking of human lives.

The hope remains that not every war will be a total war. War is hell; total war is worse.

A nation that starts going out of its way to wage total war, with all its murderous ruthlessness, is never going to be able to get the blood off its hands. They're going to have to keep looking at themselves and thinking "how can I think of myself as a decent human being if I am capable of this" for decades after the fact. If you don't believe me, look at Germany- a nation that went far out of its way to wage total war, and whose citizens found out just what they had done after the fact.

So my answer to what you're saying here is "Hell, no. That's a horrible idea in all senses of the word 'horrible.'"

[Samuel]

A nation that starts going out of its way to wage total war, with all its murderous ruthlessness, is never going to be able to get the blood off its hands. They're going to have to keep looking at themselves and thinking "how can I think of myself as a decent human being if I am capable of this" for decades after the fact. If you don't believe me, look at Germany- a nation that went far out of its way to wage total war, and whose citizens found out just what they had done after the fact.

Bullshit. Germany never waged total war- not only did Hitler fail to divert as much production away from consumer goods to military goods until extremely late in the war, the Nazi's wasted large amounts of manpower in genocide and using slave labor for household help, and they refused to use women in combat units.

Hitler's Germany fought less of a total war than the Kaiser's Germany. He was just more brutal and his aims were more ruthless.

[Simon_Jester]

Bullshit. Germany never waged total war- not only did Hitler fail to divert as much production away from consumer goods to military goods until extremely late in the war, the Nazi's wasted large amounts of manpower in genocide and using slave labor for household help, and they refused to use women in combat units.

Hitler's Germany fought less of a total war than the Kaiser's Germany. He was just more brutal and his aims were more ruthless.

I used the wrong term for the concept I was talking about, which makes you right. My communication skills suck, and I spoke imprecisely.
_______

However, I was talking about (or trying to talk about and failing) the same concept that Open_sketchbook was talking about. Call that whatever you like; I'm not sure it qualifies as "total war," either.

I'll try to be more precise to avoid the next misunderstanding:

"Total war" involves two basic concepts- the complete mobilization of all the nation's resources and the abolition of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. As conventionally understood, the first is more important than the second- the fact that your army kills everyone it can see doesn't make the war total if your own nation isn't fully mobilized in support of that army.

What Open_sketchbook is talking about sounds like a slightly different animal; call it "brutal war." The basic doctrine seems to be that because war is intrinsically brutal, the combatant should be as brutal as possible, to maximize the enemy's demoralization and minimize costs. This is not exactly the same as the concept of "total war."

You could fight a "brutal war" against a weak enemy with only a tiny fraction of your overall resources, and that would not be a "total war," because you wouldn't be fully mobilized. Regardless of whether you fight brutally or not, it would be foolish to mobilize every resource your nation has to fight a weak enemy. Or you might not have enough control over your society to fight a "total war" for political reasons, and yet have an army quite willing to wage "brutal war."
_________

I said "total war" in my previous post where I should have said "brutal war" and defined that term.

While the Third Reich did not fight a "total war," except at the very end, it did fight something a lot like a "brutal war," one where no tactic was forbidden. Moreover, it committed great atrocities behind the battle lines, which were only part of the "war" if you accepted Hitler's definition of what the war was.

I think this example is important because Germany is the world's best example of what happens when a nation commits terrible atrocities and is then forced to collectively realize what it has done at point blank range. It isn't pretty. I wouldn't wish it on my descendants, and I doubt you would, either.
_______

So even when we ignore the serious practical and moral problems with things like:

... Poisonous gas, bioweapons... unleashed upon anything that presents itself as a target in a warzone should be valid. Prisoners cost money to care for, so don't take any.

, we still have to ask ourselves how we're going to look at ourselves in the mirror afterwards. And how our descendants will. And how our willingness to do that to others will affect our willingness to accept brutality by our leaders directed at their enemies within our society.

I'd be ashamed to be part of a society* that answers those questions with "we shouldn't care, and neither should our descendants." And that is not a rhetorical statement; I mean that as the literal truth. Moreover, I think that such an answer would be factually wrong, because I don't think that side of the problem is safe to ignore.

*I won't call it a civilization

[CmdrWilkens]

I never understood that rules of warfare bullshit in the context of modern combat. Ever since we started fighting total wars I think we should have flushed that human rights crap. War is about winning and winning is about killing, maiming, terrifying and demoralizing your enemy by absolutely any means possible. Poisonous gas, bioweapons, incindiaries, mines, cluster bombs, unleashed upon anything that presents itself as a target in a warzone should be valid. Prisoners cost money to care for, so don't take any. It's war. There is no putting a pretty face on the deliberate and planned taking of human lives.

I think they ought to make this machine consume corpses because that would be utterly terrifying to an enemy and might make them do something stupid like run out to retrieve a body to prevent it's desecration. What does it matter anyway? Dead people aren't to likely to have an opinion regarding it, and once you're dead your body is just a hunk of flesh and bits anyway. If it might give us the advantage, I'd say go for it.

I doubt you've ever actually bothered to put yourself in a situation where death was a reality for the folk around you on a constant basis so I'll perhaps forgive your ingorance about what comes AFTER the war. Fighting, usually, doesn't rage forever but what lasts is how it was conducted and how the aftermath was handled. You talk of "total war" in the sense of no rules, no limitations, kill everyone and everything in the "warzone" but fail at your most basic level to realize how much of a violation of almost every dictum of why wars are fought in the first place.

You don't fight a war just to kill people. You certainly will kill people, injure others, cause hardship and destruction of scales that vary but that isn't the POINT of warfare. Famously is quoted that war is the continuation of politics by other means and simple as that statement is you fail to recognize the inherent point that wars are fought for purposes other than themselves. Wars of defense will neccessarily involve casualties amongst your native population so "total war" is simply another way to ensure that your fighting saves nothing. Wars of agression are meant to persuade, by force, an opponent to conceded something (whether economic, territorial, political, etc) in which case "total war" simply brings about the conditions for the repetition of hostilities later to the detriment of your own people. There is another saying, and I don't have attribution for it, that goes certian ends preclude certain means. Virtually every goal of warfare precludes total war.

If you'd like I'll draw it out a bit more but in the meantime try living in, or at least bothering to inform yourself of, a world where the person on the receiving end of violence lives and then you MIGHT begin to understand that last quote.

[Coyote]

blah blah blah.

I doubt you've ever actually bothered to put yourself in a situation where death was a reality for the folk around you on a constant basis so I'll perhaps forgive your ingorance about what comes AFTER the war. ...

You don't fight a war just to kill people. You certainly will kill people, injure others, cause hardship and destruction of scales that vary but that isn't the POINT of warfare. Famously is quoted that war is the continuation of politics by other means....

Don't get too lathered up-- it has been my experience that punk-ass kids that talk like that have no goddamn clue, and will probably never understand, what war is, means, is about, or why it is carried out within a framework of agreements the way it is in modern times.

This is one of those situations where "if you have to explain it, no explanation will be understood; if it is understood, no explanation is necessary".

[Shroom Man 777]

War is about governments or entities achieving ends that unfortunately cannot be obtained through other non-violent means. The fact is that even on the battlefield, it is not about indiscriminate killing but winning certain objectives and getting goals, and that indiscriminate killing and gratuitous violence may actually work contrary to the goals a nation might try to achieve.

There's a reason why people have reasons for fighting. Fighting for freedom, fighting for religion, fighting for peace, fighting for goddamn food, etc.

To be fair, Coyote, war is a very contraversial and complicated concept and a whole lot of the public (myself included) have a whole lot of misconceptions regarding it.

[open_sketchbook]

I wasn't trying to say that we should kill every person in the other nation to win a war. But the worse you make a war for your enemy, the shorter it's going to end up being, and the less suffering and death in the long run. Obviously trying to kill everyone, or killing completely indiscriminately in a situation of limited warfare would be counterproductive, but holding your own side back with restrictions when you could minimize your own casualties by "stooping" to a lower level seems equally counterproductive.

[Simon_Jester]

I wasn't trying to say that we should kill every person in the other nation to win a war. But the worse you make a war for your enemy, the shorter it's going to end up being, and the less suffering and death in the long run.

Experience suggests that if you make war in a way so brutal that your enemies tell scary stories about you for generations, the children of your enemies will want revenge. In which case you must either kill them all so that there are no children of your enemies. Or you must maintain a constant presence so aggressive and brutal that they remain constantly terrorized, without ever thinking even for a moment that they could actually get revenge on you for your evil and cruelty.

In the first case, you wind up having to make up for being evil during the war by being more evil afterwards. In the second, you eventually fail and are utterly screwed.