Robot + Super Gun = 'Crowd Control'

Found on Wired on Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Browse Technology

What do you do with a robot armed with a million-round-per-minute gun? "Crowd control," naturally.

Metal Storm's 40mm weapons mount, the company tells us, can deliver both high-explosive and less-lethal rounds. Which makes it perfect for everything from urban assaults to "border patrol" to "infrastructure protection" to "crowd control."

Its rival, Foster-Miller, has already tried out its machines with Metal Storm weapons, and has three machine gun-toting 'bots in Iraq. Because of safety concerns, however, they're not seeing much action. Not even crowd control.

If those bots work like the Oerlikon GDF-005 at a presentation at Lohatlha, it will get, well, interesting. For whatever reason, the GDF-005, an anti-aircraft weapon, decided to turn and fired into a crowd of soldiers, killing 9 and wounding 14. The only reason why there were not more casualties is the fact that the cannon ran out of ammuniton after it fired all its 500 rounds. Now imagine a robot with a million rounds per minute rate: it could wipe out the entire population of New York City in about 8 seconds. Too bad those people forgot the Three Laws of Robotics, written by Isaac Asimov:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.