Foster-Miller

Apparently it was too hard to prevent the Army's gun-equipped robot from moving its gun "when it was not intended to move." Reassuring, no?

At a muddy test track in Grand Prairie, Texas, 13 miles west of Dallas, the robot is winning. It has climbed on top of a sedan, its 2.5-ton bulk propped on the crumpled roof. The car never stood a chance. The MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment) is roughly the size of a Humvee, but it has a trick worthy of monster truck rallies. Each of its six wheels is mounted on an articulated leg, allowing the robot to clamber up obstacles that other cars would simply bump against.

When robot-maker Foster-Miller strapped machine guns onto a trio of bomb-disposal bots and sent them to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007, the company created the first armed robots to be deployed in a war zone. Still, no robot has ever actually fired a shot in combat. “Weaponized robots represent a new technology that is only in the developmental stages,” says Duane Gotvald, a deputy at the Pentagon’s Robotic Systems Joint Project Office.