DND experimenting with robotic tanks and helicopters, hoping to make them think

OTTAWA - Don't expect them to say "Hasta la vista, baby," but the robotic armoured vehicles and pilotless aircraft being developed by Canada's military scientists may one day be able to think for themselves.

The aim of the project by Canada's defence research branch, launched last fall, is to improve on the current generation of remote-controlled devices designed for the battlefield.

It may sound like something from the Terminator films, but defence scientists say what they're doing is a long way from the world envisioned by the science fiction action flicks that made California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name.

Franklin Wong, who leads the project at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier, Que., says the vehicles under study are not meant for combat but rather surveillance.

"That's a very important capability that we're looking for," Wong said in a recent interview.

"Many of our projects (at Defence Research Canada) are geared towards the surveillance aspect."

Whether these robotic vehicles should eventually be armed is an ethical debate for policy-makers and leaders, he added.

In the four-movie Terminator franchise, humanity fights in a genocidal war waged by artificially intelligent robots. Some of Schwarzenegger's most memorable catch phrases - "Hasta la vista, baby" and "I'll be back' - came from his turn as one of the murderous cyborgs.

Canada's goals are much less dramatic.

The Canadian military currently employs Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to patrol bomb-infested roads and provide early warning of ambushes for troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

The Heron is capable of carrying weapons, but the Conservative government as recently as last spring turned down a request by the air force to install missiles on the drones that are controlled by pilots on the ground at a base station.

The U.S. employs an arsenal of sophisticated unmanned aircraft, such as the Predator and the Reaper, which have conducted an all-out aerial assault on Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists hiding in Pakistan.

The Pentagon and defence contractors have already built remotely guided armoured vehicles, such as the Gladiator. The squat six-wheeled tractors in development since 2005 for the U.S. Marine Corps are about the size of an all-terrain vehicle and bristle with rocket tubes and guns.

The U.S. Army has a bigger unmanned ground vehicle called a Crusher, something akin to a monster truck.

And armies all over the world have long used remote bomb-sniffing robots.

But taking the human out of the equation is fraught with scientific and moral challenges.

The technical hurdle to be overcome is mostly software-related. Wong calls it giving the vehicles a "certain level of autonomy," and acknowledged policy-makers need to grapple with the implications.

"Technologically, a reconnaissance vehicle versus an armed vehicle, one is not harder than the other to make," said Wong.

"The main difference when we talk reconnaissance vehicles versus armed vehicles really is an ethical question. Because it becomes a decision on who is going make the decision to pull the trigger."

Defence planners see uses for robot recon vehicles in places such as the Arctic, where harsh weather conditions limit human activity. They would also be good for border surveillance, experts argue.

Last fall, the federal government awarded a sole-source contract to Quanser Consulting Inc., an Ontario company that specializes in robotics. It was given the task of acquiring vehicles and helping set up the research centre at Valcartier, where the development would be done.

Wong said a side benefit is that the military will better understand, when it comes time to buy these vehicles, what robotic technology works and what doesn't work.

The pace of change is staggering and as long as the U.S. keeps pumping money into robotic research the vehicles will appear pretty quickly, he said.