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Spot Robot Goes Fighting as French Army Deploys It During Exercise

Terminators, Cylons, replicators, Omnius… These are just a few of the many imagined robots and artificial intelligence systems that have conspired over the years on film or paper to end human life as we know it. And some would argue Spot could soon easily be added to the list.
Spot and the French soldiers from École militaire interarmes 1 photo
Photo: Lignes de defense
The headless dog-like robot cooked up in the Boston Dynamics laboratories has been a solid media presence for years. It has been on the market for only under a year, but it is already tested in various roles, some scarier than others.

We’ve seen the Spot since it was released last summer in a variety of circumstances, from dancing in the rain to shooting paintballs. The New York Police Department has one too, called Digidog, and is testing it as a reconnaissance tool. But until now, the robot was not involved in any military activities that we know of.

That changed in late March when a group of 80 students from the French École militaire interarmes (EMIA) fielded one during a two-day exercise at the Coëtquidan military camp. Spot was not the single robot involved in this, as it had to simulate fighting alongside the Nexter Nerva observation robot and the Nexter Optio, a 20-mm cannon-armed heavy ground drone.

There were three scenarios for the exercise, offensive (taking a crossroads), defensive (holding ground in day and night), and urban combat. Each of these scenarios was played twice, the first time without the robots’ assistance and the second time with them deployed.

Spot was fielded by Shark Robotics, which according to French publication Lignes de defense, is the European distributor for Boston Dynamics.

This being a military exercise and all, its details are not all public, but we know the goal was to assess the robots’ reaction time, aggressiveness, and vulnerabilities. According to the source, one of the soldiers taking part couldn’t help from noticing the difference between being “killed” without the robots’ aid in urban combat and walking away “unharmed” once they were on the ground.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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