Industries: Defense

Sep
30

Here Comes Alpha Dog!

A few weeks ago, my colleague Simon Anderson speculated that in the near future the number of robotic soldiers would exceed the number of human soldiers in this edition of The Tomorrow Times. To understand why this vision is coming to fruition faster than many people expect, I invite you to watch the latest video [...]

Aug
27

Walking into the Future

I recently delivered a keynote presentation to Care Providers of Minnesota–an association of aging services facilities. During my talk, I showed a snippet from this video of a parapalegic woman using a new robotic exoskeleton to walk. I suggested that in the not-to-distant future a number of people would altogether forego wheelchairs. The future is [...]

Feb
21

Flying into the Future with Robots

In my predictions for 2011, I wrote this as my Number #2 prediction: An armed military ground robot will successfully identify and terminate a top Taliban leader deep inside a cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. In response, a U.S. military robot will be hijacked and used against U.S. forces in a deadly attack. [...]

Aug
11

The Future Means Never Saying Never

The Wall Street Journal has a chilling article on bioterrorism in today’s paper. At the end of the article, one analyst tries to make everyone feel better by saying, “The idea that four guys in a cave are going to create bioterrorism from scratch–that will be never, ever, ever.” And, of course, he is right [...]

Jul
13

The Future of Warfare

On this day in 1942, the Soviet Union beat back the German’s in the largest tank battle in history. It is now no secret that the U.S. is deploying untold numbers of unmanned aerial vehicles and robots in warfare. What is more interesting to think about is how these tools will be used in warfare [...]