Increases in terrorist activities around the world are forcing the military to train their units in different ways for tackling the menace, especially for urban engagements. Marathon Robotics, an Australian company, in conjunction with the Australian Department of Defense, has revolutionized the way police and military personnel can train their personnel. They have adapted the two-wheeled gyro-stabilized Segway personal transporter and turned it into a Terrorist Robot.
Marathon fits their Terrorist Robots with a Segway transporter and target silhouettes. These form the remote controlled, wheeled robot targets for the military personnel to practice. Moving and responding like humans, these Segway robots can duck into doorways or disperse at the sound of gunfire. That provides the police and military sharpshooters a challenging and ultra-realistic training in engaging the moving enemy. Australian Special Forces units train using mock urban centers populated with the rolling robots from Marathon. Now, the US Marine Corps is looking forward to a similar live-fire training venue, fully equipped with Marathon’s Terrorist Robots.
Marathon has created the ultimate moving targets of the twenty-first century. They have done this by combining remote-controlled, armored Segway and computer gaming technology. With the lower half of the robots armor-plated, the expensive electronic innards remain safe from errant shots. The top has a replica of a human torso. During the training, clothing the torso section differently, enables distinguishing military targets from civilians or hostages from terrorists.
Marathon uses sophisticated software for controlling multiple Segway robots simultaneously. The software program allows a group of these robots to mimic a group of terrorists holding hostages or simply a squad on a patrol. Furthermore, the control part of the software allows the robots to demonstrate autonomous or intelligent behavior.
For example, the sound of a gunshot makes the robots disperse automatically, just as humans would. The robots can further be trained to seek cover behind objects or in hallways. More importantly, the robots can behave very similar to humans – stopping quickly, turning a full circle, retreating slowly or accelerating to a human pace of running. Just as people do, the Segbots also lean forward slightly as they move forward. To avoid running into obstacles or people on the move, Marathon equips their robots with laser range finders. Watch the Terrorist Robots in action below.
For the military or the police personnel, a battlefield is not the right place for on-the-job training. The Marathon smart targets thus provide a realistic method to address this fundamental gap in training. This is the first time shooters can fire live ammunition in a firefight at realistically moving targets. That provides the soldiers the optimum way of training to fight – using live ammunition against unpredictably moving targets.
Programming the robots is simple. The computer shows a map of the entire terrain and the placement of the robots. The possible routes that the robots can take are superimposed on the map. From here onwards, the Terrorist Robots are on their own, moving around autonomously, avoiding obstacles in their path and other robots, until a sudden gunshot changes their behavior.
