Wired is carrying an article on plans by the U.S military to develop the next generation of the Packbot (which is already in use in Iraq).
The robots, called small unmanned ground vehicles, or SUGVs, will detect the presence of chemical and biological weapons, identify targets for artillery and infantrymen, and ferret out snipers hiding inside urban buildings. Today, humans mainly perform these tasks, often becoming the first casualties of battle while looking for snipers or explosives.
The SUGV (pronounced "sug-vee") will be a smaller and lighter version of the PackBot, a 42-pound robot with tanklike rubber treads designed by iRobot, a company based in Burlington, Massachusetts.
More information on the SUGV and America's 'Future Combat Systems' can be found here. Quite unnerving how rapidly fiction is being transformed into reality..
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