Free Republic

CHINA had a test run with its newest military addition - robot dogs equipped with machine guns on their back. The machine gun robodogs are going through drills for a 15-day exercise called Golden Dragon with Chinese and Cambodian troops. Golden Dragon was held in central Kampong Chhnang Province and at sea off Preah Sihanouk Province, Agence France-Presse reported last week. The training mission consists of over 2,000 troops, 14 warships, two helicopters, and 69 armored vehicles/tanks alongside the remote-controlled four-legged robot dogs with automatic rifles. The troops are also working on live-fire, anti-terrorism, and humanitarian rescue drills are included....

A breakthrough in artificial intelligence being tested by the Australian military reportedly allows soldiers to control robot dogs solely with their minds. Called a brain robotic interface, the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence — through a high-tech biosensor headset — analyzes brainwave readings and feeds them from a person’s visual cortex into the advanced “robodog,” Newsflash reported. The current key to keeping the bots on course are flickering beacons — seen as augmented reality in the headsets — which work as waypoints that the canine-like automatons move toward. “You don’t have to think anything specific to operate the robot, but you do...

Ghost Robotics and SWORD International have teamed up to create a rifle-toting "robot dog." Called the Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle, or SPUR, the system adds a 6.5mm Creedmoor rifle from SWORD to one of Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles, or Q-UGVs. The SPUR made its debut on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army's (AUSA) main annual convention in Washington, D.C., which opened yesterday. Though Ghost Robotics is partnered with a number of other companies to explore defense and security applications, among others, for its Q-UGVs — which you can read more about in this past...