Current Technical Research Issues of Autonomous Robots Employed in Combat
Harmon, S. Y., Douglas W. Gage · Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) · 1984
The recent upsurge in interest in autonomous robots for combat applications has focused considerable attention on several of the obvious technical issues (e.g. target recognition, autonomous navigation, route planning) . However, several technical issues exist which remain unapproached and, in some cases, even unacknowledged by the robotics community. This paper explores three such issues: (1) robot fault tolerance, (2) robot security and (3) multi-robot coordination. These issues are discussed in terms of the technology limitations and the research issues associated with those limitations. A common message which occurs several times during this discussion denotes the importance in modular implementation and well defined interfaces between subsystems in the development of autonomous combat robots.