Lara Jakes
With a stiff gait, a drone dog stomped up and down a makeshift minefield at a U.S. Army testing center in Virginia, shuddering when it neared a plate-size puck meant to simulate an anti-tank explosive. On its back was a stack of cameras, GPS devices, radios and thermal imaging technology that military developers hope will help it detect mines at close range, sparing humans from that dangerous task.
For the most part, the dog appeared to know when to stay away from the mock mine, given the artificial intelligence embedded in its system to identify threats. “Mostly it does, but sometimes it doesn’t,” Kendall V. Johnson, a physicist at the countermine division of the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, said during a demonstration this summer outside Washington. “That’s something we’re working on currently.”
The drone dog is among a handful of emerging technologies in anti-mine warfare — a field that, until now, experts say had not changed much in the past 50 years. But just as drones, which are generally defined as uncrewed machines, not exclusively aircraft, that are piloted remotely, have proved in Ukraine to be an important offensive weapon in modern fighting, they now may also provide defense, with new and safer ways to detect and clear land mines.
No comments:
Post a Comment