If we stick to this definition, we can say that military robots have been around ever since World War II and the Cold War trough the presence of the German Goliath Track Mine and the Soviet Teletank. But both these robots were simple and made little impact on the war.

It was not until a few years ago (starting with the Second Iraq War) that military robots really started to be important in a conflict, and with the technology developing rapidly since, it’s not a wonder that more and more defense contractors around the world are working hard at developing autonomous “robot soldiers”. It’s true that these robots look nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie “Terminator”, but they seem to be very useful with their tank-like appearance.

“When the military says ‘robot’ they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots,” says Bill Smart, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the Washington University in St. Louis.

As appealing a robot that thinks for its own may be, the army intends to keep human involved. This both because there is no artificial intelligence system that can operate in an armed conflict and the fact that the army states it’s better to have a human being taking the decisions than a computer. That does not mean that having a human to operate the robot using a joystick and a computer screen is a set back. In fact, it’s great that even tough the robot is attacked, the army loses only the machine while the person controlling it is safe at the base.

“It’s a chain of command thing. You don’t want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You want to have a human hit the button,” says Smart. “You don’t want the robot to make the wrong decision. You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions.”

The research team at Washington University in St. Louis intends to make a robot carry individual tasks without human control, just like a Sims character. You tell your Sim what to do, you don’t control him doing it. This is exactly what the research team is trying to do. While the robot is carrying out an order, the person controlling can carry out an order on another robot or do another task, making this both resource intelligent and time saving.

Even tough, the robots will not replace human soldiers, they will most likely be the firsts to do scouting operations or be the first row of the battle line. Today, the MQ-1 Predator is the best robot the world has to offer. The Mq-1 Predator aircraft systems is built for unmanned reconnaissance and can even fire two AGM-114 Hellfire Missiles.

It seems that humans will not be replaced by robots, but instead the robots will make the next conflicts safer for the armies that control this technology best.