Air and ground military robots team up ! (video)

"A team of autonomous flying and ground-based robots have successfully cooperated to search for and locate targets in the streets of an urban warfare training ground in the US."

... is the way a recent article at the New Scientist Tech website starts off!
A very compelling bit of news which talks about a test done where 1 flying robot and 4 ground-based robots teamed up to hunt for an orange box. Using color cameras and GPS tracking devices.

The full story with video is HERE.

This is pretty neat stuff just on it's own for all us robot/AI geeks, but with all the reading I've been doing I can't help put some OTHER pieces of the puzzle together.

What happens when these air or ground robots are fitted with gear for face recognition, and some small arms weapon? These technologies are already being used quite regularly, but not all together (yet) as far as I know. It's not too hard to imagine an army of small machines "marching" in to a town for a well organized, quick and efficient assassination of high-profile targets.

Also, what happens when these robots are miniaturized even more? Perhaps even down to nano-technology? It could really shake up your world if YOU became the target of a swarm of microscopic killing machines!

For now, there is further reading you might be interested in the military's use of 3-D face recognition, and perhaps a quick look at another how the nano-tech arms race may have already begun!

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