This was covered in the London papers, but Popular Mechanics has better pictures and more links–I’m writing of course about Qinetic’s firefighting robots. “When you have money to burn, robots are the best kind of first responders: the disposable kind. Bomb-squad bots are already a common tool for local law enforcement agencies and the military, but remote-controlled firefighters are just now making it into the field. A team of robots built by London-based Qinetiq has recently started responding to a very specific threat: fires involving Acetylene gas.”

“The Roomba’s inventors over at iRobot have also explored this territory, claiming that its upcoming Warrior X700, which is due next year, could be used to fight fires.”

On the military side, “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.” Er, I have heard that shots have been fired in anger by robots… maybe not theirs…

From the information assurance point of view, the key quote is this: “One thing that won’t change is who decides to pull the trigger. MAARS doesn’t have a mind of its own: A soldier commands the bot through a video-and-map-enabled remote control.”

This generation of robots could be categorized as ‘longer nozzles’ for firefighting equipment or ‘longer barrels’ for the military. They should pose little or no IA issues. It’s when we start programming them that we need to concern ourselves with information security and assurance–but wouldn’t it be better if we were planning for that now?