As one might expect with its vast defence budget, the US leads the sector and has advanced programmes to develop not only land-based robots like the Crusher but also the next generation of airborne drones such as the X47-B, a futuristic bat-shaped aircraft with far greater abilities to “fly” itself than the Reapers and Predators used to pick off terrorist leaders in Yemen and Pakistan.
But other countries have already gone further in finding practical uses for robotic weaponry. South Korea and Israel have deployed armed sentries on their disputed borders with North Korea and the Palestinian territories, respectively.
Both systems – arrays of sensors, loudspeakers and guns capable of delivering a lethal shot over two miles – have a mode to automatically fire on an intruder, although each country insists the option to attack remains for now under direct human control.
Professor Noel Sharkey, the eminent roboticist at Sheffield University and co-founder of the International Committee on Robot Arms Control, told The Independent: “There was once a time when the world recognised the dangers and immorality of the aerial bombardment of cities. Shortly after that, the Second World War broke out and we all know what that resulted in.
“We must not allow the same tit-for-tat process to start with robotic weaponry. There is an absolute red line here which is that a machine must never be delegated the decision to kill a human.”
He added: “There are such machines out there, but they are very far from being able to correctly discern the point at which to apply lethal force. We have been working on artificial intelligence since the 1950s but the difficulties are immense. A machine might be able to tell the difference between a ship and a tank, but it may well struggle to tell the difference between a tank and a civilian lorry with a plank of wood sticking out of it.”