Schneier- US Army Researching Bot Swarms

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US Army Researching Bot Swarms

The US Army Research Agency is funding research into autonomous bot swarms. From the announcement: The objective of this CRA is to perform enabling basic and applied research to extend the reach, situational awareness, and operational effectiveness of large heterogeneous teams of intelligent systems and Soldiers against dynamic threats in complex and contested environments and provide technical and operational superiority...
   
   

The US Army Research  Agency is funding research into autonomous bot swarms. From the announcement:

The objective of this CRA is to perform enabling basic and applied research to extend the reach, situational awareness, and operational effectiveness of large heterogeneous teams of intelligent systems and Soldiers against dynamic threats in complex and contested environments and provide technical and operational superiority through fast, intelligent, resilient and collaborative behaviors. To achieve this, ARL is requesting proposals that address three key Research Areas (RAs):

RA1: Distributed Intelligence: Establish the theoretical foundations of multi-faceted distributed networked intelligent systems combining autonomous agents, sensors, tactical super-computing, knowledge bases in the tactical cloud, and human experts to acquire and apply knowledge to affect and inform decisions of the collective team.

RA2: Heterogeneous Group Control:  Develop theory and algorithms for control of large autonomous teams with varying levels of heterogeneity and modularity across sensing, computing, platforms, and degree of autonomy.

RA3: Adaptive and Resilient Behaviors: Develop theory and experimental methods for heterogeneous teams to carry out tasks under the dynamic and varying conditions in the physical world.

Slashdot thread.

And while we're on the subject, this is an excellent report on AI and national security.

Source: US Army Researching Bot Swarms

[deanwebb]

Reminds me of an essay by Stanislav Lem, can't remember the title right now, in which he describes how swarms of roach-sized bots could be set up to each carry a miniscule part of a nuclear core and assemble it at a remote location, where it could be detonated. The detonation would wipe out the evidence in the bots, of course, so the explosion would be difficult to attribute with certainty.