The Roborace racing robot’s gun-toting debut showed it has more fighting power than many piloted aircraft in the service
A robot is trained to aim and fire a tiny sniper rifle as it takes its place at the annual US Army trade show in Arlington, Virginia.
The vehicle is the first programmed to fire automatic weapons with a precision of up to a meter and a half and is designed to carry both shells and shots on its shoulder.
It is the first robotic dog deployed by a major US military service.
The robot is packed with sensors that help it see as well as control its piston firing mechanisms, a first for robotic vehicles. The vehicle, which was developed by Roborace, a company behind the world’s first self-driving car event last week, can navigate a racetrack within a quarter mile in less than six seconds, the company said.
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Roborace unveiled the robot last week at a tech conference in Beijing at a time when robots are in focus following President Donald Trump’s banning of the Seattle-based Horizon Zero Dawn game, amid worries that its depiction of a world where cyborgs are commonplace could inspire violence.
“It’s like a tennis ball,” Nate Thelen, the company’s chief technology officer, said of the gun for the robot. “You throw it and it moves and it moves until it gets as close to your target as possible, and then you can hit it.”
The Roborace vehicle fires from a distance of up to 1.8m at a human with the MXA-2 sniper rifle, the service said in a statement.
Roborace unveiled the robot last week at a tech conference in Beijing at a time when robots are in focus following President Donald Trump’s banning of the Seattle-based Horizon Zero Dawn game, amid worries that its depiction of a world where cyborgs are commonplace could inspire violence.
