Robot tanks will be tested in a simulated battle initiated by the U.S. Army in 2022, as military leaders take further steps to prepare the wheeled robots for real-life combat.
According to Defense One, an entire company of unmanned combat vehicles will be set up for mock conflict next year, as part of an experiment that is believed to be the first of its kind in terms of scale. The lessons learned from the seemingly unprecedented demo will help to refine the vehicles' hardware and software to enable them to one day take to the field.
General Ross Coffman, who is the director of Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional team, is said to have noted the significant expansion of the experiment while speaking to reporters at AUSA this week. He reflected on last year’s platoon-sized robot exercise in Colorado and how that instructed their plans moving forward.
"We learned a ton. There were some clear winners in the technology base. There were some that weren't as great," Coffman said of the Army's previous robot tank trial. "Now we're moving it up to company level. The lessons learned here, we can now then apply to a brigade and to a division and see how we want to fight with these things in the future."
Coffman also said he has no knowledge of any other country that has conducted anything above singular vehicle experiments but that hasn't stopped the U.S. Army from forging ahead with its plans in recent months. In August, five firms were hired to design prototypes for unmanned combat vehicles on the condition of operating an open systems architecture.
This system design approach means that the vehicles are able to accommodate third-party software and sensors, as program leaders plan to test autonomy software from different sources and enlist the country's top minds in the field to further enhance its machines and to integrate the latest AI capabilities in an easier and more effective manner.
"We have a system integration lab that's a combination of both software virtual environments as well as the hardware that represents those systems," explained Michael Cadieux, director of ground vehicles for the U.S. Army Development Command. "We'll do it in a virtual world... then apply it to the actual vehicle systems in a fairly relevant train to see how it performs."
Various studies of robotics and artificial intelligence have made the headlines in recent times. The results of a study last year found that people generally prefer androids to have human-like features, much like the Tesla Bot that Elon Musk unveiled at Tesla's AI event in August. This came just before the company delayed its Blade Runner-inspired Cybertruck into 2022.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
