A while ago, people engaged in war actually broke a sweat. Some of them even got killed. While this certainly was a bad thing for the team receiving the hits, it made for a somewhat more “noble” war, if you can imagine such a thing.
Now, well, I’m sure you’ve heard it before, it’s push-button warfare. And leave it to Carnegie Mellon to add a layer of detachment to the whole thing with the Gladiator, a remote controlled warbot.
According to Dimi Apostolopoulos, Carnegie Mellon’s lead scientist on the project, the Gladiator will use sensors to warn soldiers about a variety of dangers: enemy positions, barbed wire, mines, and even chemical, biological or nuclear threats.
The Gladiator will also be able to detect and avoid obstacles such as craters. Eventually, the Marines hope to arm the Gladiator with machine guns and other weapons.
So really, the time where everyone sits in a little radio room and fights the war from a distance, leaving only innocent civilians to be caught in the crossfire, is not that far away. Lovely.
