Transformer-like abilities

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.