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In future wars, robots may drop from the sky by the hundreds from unmanned aircraft, swarming like giant insects over battlefields in coordinated, terrifying assaults.
But that is a decades away scenario.
For now, military planners and robot designers are simply trying to improve devices some of which could see action soon in Iraq by incorporating lessons from Afghanistan, where robots saw their first significant military action.
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the military who says robots will one day replace soldiers.
Navigating tough terrain
Yet the newest robots being developed by companies including iRobot range farther from their "masters" than did their forebears in Afghanistan. They can navigate terrain and obstacles more deftly, lay down a cover of smoke, test for chemical weapons and extend a "neck" that can peer around corners.
The machines are also learning how to right themselves if they flip over as well as how to follow their tracks back home if they lose contact with their base.
The Pentagon has no doubts robots can save lives.
"I don't have any problem writing to iRobot, saying 'I'm sorry your robot died, can we get another?"' said Colonel Bruce Jette, the Army's point man on robot deployment, who accompanied the first, $45,000 iRobot "PackBots" into the field in Afghanistan. "That's a lot easier letter to write than to a father or mother."
Prior to Afghanistan, the military was using robots for search and rescue and ordnance disposal, but mostly viewed them as long term research. Airborne drones had proved easier to build than effective land robots.
hxxp://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/01/13/robots.atwar.ap/index.html
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