iRobot readying bigger, deadlier Warrior X700 robot

It looks like those that found iRobot's earlier Warrior robots a tad lacking could soon have some of their demands answered in the form of the new and improved Warrior X700, which the company recently took the wrap off. Weighing in at a hefty 250 pounds, this one promises to carry a 500 pound payload with ease, and lift upwards of 150 pounds with its robotic arm. Of course, with a name like "Warrior," it'll also be doing more than just carrying supplies, with it just as capable of firing a machine gun or some 40mm explosive rounds, the latter of which can be done at 16 rounds a second. The bot's apparently not ready to be put into service just yet, however, with it currently only able to muster up a top speed of ten miles per hour, although iRobot says it'll be able to do a four-minute mile by the time it ships out in the second half of next year.

[Via Danger Room]

[Che @ Oct 17th 2007 4:38PM]

Price? Availability?

[zfurie @ Oct 17th 2007 4:56PM]

Hmmm this guy here could be used to pick up toys and what not and do some bit of precleaning then release the roomba hidden beneath the hull between the tracks.

[insertAlias @ Oct 17th 2007 6:17PM]

I for one welcome our......screw it, I want the joke to die too.

[Greg Poole @ Oct 17th 2007 6:30PM]

I can't help but feel we're doing it all wrong. Why is it that we have to take the path toward robots specifically for a military purpose, instead of ones we can use in other dangerous areas of work. Is it a sign of how we treat human life (or rather the lives of our enemies) that we would be willing to put the decision of whether or not to take it in the hands of an automaton? Why not train them to rescue people from burning buildings, or is that not as important?

[TEM @ Oct 17th 2007 8:12PM]

Greg, you're a freakin' genius! We should be building robots to rescue people from the burning buildings that our enemies blow up.

[Shaocaholica @ Oct 17th 2007 8:43PM]

No where in the article did it say that the new robot would be autonomous nor are any other battlefield robots with lethal capability autonomous. Why does this have come up every single time?

If its worth anything, soldiers lives will be saved. Perhaps in the future, since these robots will be able to take more bullets than a real human, they could be armed with less than lethal weapons but don't count on them taking away full lethal weapons.

[Greg Poole @ Oct 18th 2007 3:21AM]

Perhaps instead of condemning me for considering the negatives, TEM, you might consider why it is that our enemies would want to blow up buildings in the first place? Surely striving to research better ways to live in peace is better than trying to build a bigger and more powerful gun. Do you think that someday we'll invent the most powerful gun ever and suddenly there will be world peace? Maybe if one or the other side wins the war there'll be peace, because of course thats worked so many times in the past. If violence is the answer, then why haven't we solved the problem yet?

As for Shaocaholica, I misread the article, sorry. As for there not being any autonomous lethal robots, I beg to differ: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2504508&page=1

[russdogg @ Oct 17th 2007 7:33PM]

I like how saying 4 minute mile makes it sound 20 times faster when really its only 15mph...

[Alexeon @ Oct 17th 2007 7:25PM]

Actually, training it to rescue someone from a building is more complicated than pulling a trigger... at least it sounds more complicated.

[Typhoid Mary @ Oct 17th 2007 7:29PM]

iHandjob?

[Jon @ Oct 17th 2007 8:35PM]

Based on the looks of it, seems like we are only a few generations away from fully functional Johnny-Fives, sweet!

[JLTate @ Oct 18th 2007 1:56AM]

Duh. We already had a fully functional Johnny-Five two decades ago. After escaping his former life of militaristic duty he became a day trader in Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, he was one of the few winners of the dot-com boom in the late 90s, becoming the CEO of a successful Fortune 500 business. Recently, he even made the Forbes list of the top 100 richest people in the world. God people, seriously. Look it up.

[Dean Hougen @ Oct 18th 2007 1:27PM]

Yes, it is too bad no one has ever considered using robots for rescue operations.

http://crasar.csee.usf.edu/rescuerobots/robots.htm

http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/projects/USAR/

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/wiscengr/issues/nov00/robot.html

Etc., etc., etc. (I had a bunch more URLs in here but engadget limits me to three.)



Dean