This sounds like science fiction. Bad science fiction. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it though. Killer robots from Silicon Valley could replace soldiers:
Robotex is the brainchild of Terry Izumi, a reclusive filmmaker who comes from a long line of samurai warriors, has trained Secret Service agents, and worked both at DreamWorks and in Disney’s Imagineering division.When Izumi decided to build a better war robot in 2005, he recruited Nathan Gettings, a former PayPal software engineer and founder of Palantir Technologies, who brought in his brother Adam as well as a fourth (silent) partner who hails from both PayPal and YouTube. They had a prototype in no time. But they needed a weapon, and that’s how Jerry Baber, his revolutionary shotgun, and a pilotless mini-helicopter come into the picture.
Samurai, Secret Service, Disney Imagineering, Palantir Technologies? And a pilotless mini-copter? Can it get any better? Yes:
With that meeting, he turned a promising little robot into something both multifunctional and truly scary. His company’s $8,000 Atchisson Assault-12 shotgun was fresh off the assembly line after a dozen years in development. It’s made of aircraft-grade stainless steel, never needs lubrication or cleaning, and won’t rust. Pour sand through it and it won’t clog. It doesn’t recoil, so it’s accurate even when it’s firing in automatic mode, which it does at a rate of 300 rounds per minute.“It delivers the lead equivalent of 132 M16s,” says Baber. “When they start firing from every direction, it’s all over.”
And the AA-12 is versatile. Along with firing ridiculously powerful FRAG-12 ammo — a straight-out-of-Terminator shell that contains a whirling miniature grenade — the AA-12 can handle non-lethal Tasers and even bullets that are deadly up to 120 feet but fall harmlessly by 800 feet.
Limited-range bullets are important in urban combat situations, Baber explains, because once an insurgent gets between the robot and a soldier operating it on the ground, the bot is rendered useless – unless the soldier wants to shoot at himself.
Baber has paired the AH and its smaller sibling, the MH, with a remote-control mini-helicopter called the AutoCopter, which holds two AA-12s and can carry the bots into battle. His plan is to buy the robots from Robotex and the helicopter from Neural Robotics in Huntsville, Ala. Then he’s going to arm them, resell the systems, and split the profits.
Of course, anyone who’s piloted a remote-control helicopter should take pause at the notion of mounting “the lead equivalent of 132 M16s” on one.
Anyway, check out the CGI video.