I disagree with WAN show,, the robot dog gun is exactly right

[tsmspace]

The thing about machines, is no one wants the one that's good, and at first it's not clear it IS the good one, but,, the winner always is that weird not good one that if you know, you can predict it. 

 

So,, the gun is importantly very high up on the dog, meaning that the recoil is hard to deal with, since it has a really big leverage angle, meaning the dog basically can't possibly counter the recoil. ,,, well,,, machines and stability is this whole thing, By first of all using a regular gun, tons of engineering is done already, and the trick will work on all sorts of bots with simple brackets and some 3d printed bushings that fit between the brackets and the robot. Then, the legs are long, so the gun needs to be suspended up from the body basically as much as the body is suspended from the ground, because that's just how energy dispersing works in machines. Tanks have massive heavy tracks, so the turret can be directly on the body, since the body is directly on the ground, but what ground they shoot from matters. The robot dog will be able to shoot from more kinds of ground and still hit consistently, because the legs and then the brackets provide so much damping. 

 

Then,, the gun needs to be up higher because the difference in shooting from close to the ground vs shooting from about shoulder height will mean a lot fewer obstructions. The gun needs to have a clear path to the target, which means the robot will need to move more if the gun is lower. The sensors and cameras used to aim the gun would be better off above the gun,,, BUT,, not once the gun fires and the robot is so much lighter than the gun was intended to be held by. Also, once again, by having the gun above the camera, it is much more likely that the gun will not be obstructed, as most obstructions will be from the ground up. Very rarely will a building or tree hang an obstruction so that the camera aims but the gun is obstructed, meanwhile most often an obstruction will be resting on the ground, leading to the camera being able to see the target, but the gun being obstructed. 

 

a turret is not desirable because the stability will require the robot's posture to be facing the target anyway. 

 

aiming with the legs is desirable because the legs will already be large parts, meaning they will be more durable overall compared to having legs and a turret. more weight will stress the legs more, and also will likely need to be minimum size meaning fragile. 

 

lighter is better with machines, particularly in an environment where success is measured in rates, not in absolute single instances. That means that one robot dog will not win, but that many will succeed whether some of them fail from being a bit too light. 

 

finally,, the mounting of the gun just does need to be centered, elevated, etc. The rotation of the recoil will be much better for durability and consistency than would be a gun that results in a recoil that pushes the body in a straight line. The difference between an old drill and a modern day driver is a good way to imagine the energy. An old school heavy duty drill is really hard to drive screws with, because the bits get stripped too easily, the screws break, the bit pops out constantly,, meanwhile a driver (and if you watch videos on how the driver hammers, it again looks like it should just wear out and not work or something) moves around, bounces around, jiggles around,, and that's WHY the bit tip stays in the screw. 

[Montana One-Six]

There are multiple flaws with that design which make it unfeasible for actual combat use or any use really outside of it being a fun gimmick for the range.

 

1. A magazine fed gun is not feasible for any robot because they cannot reload. Which is why pretty much any commercial combat bot you see is using a belt fed machine gun. With that a robot can fire a lot more rounds before any reload would be necessary. The downside of that is a machine gun weighs way more than an SMG plus the hundreds of rounds need to be stored somewhere and also weigh a lot. Which means you need a design that can handle all that weight and that dog is just not made for that.

 

2. Now about the weight of the dog. The robot is way to light which is evident at the amount it moves when shooting a 9mm round. 9mm contrary to what some politicians say is not a powerful round and inadequate as a main armament for most combat environments. Since it struggles so much with 9mm it is probably impossible to use any rifle caliber with that bot while also having a good follow up shot that is somewhat accurate in a timely manner.

 

3. With the gun on top the bot is high centered and would probably struggle with uneven terrain and be restricted to mostly even ground to negate the danger of it falling to its side or rolling. Which could for one break the gun mount, loosen the gun mount or force a zero shift compared to what the robot is trained on which all would take the bot out of the fight.

 

Apart from that there are multiple other factors which would mainly (only) be an issue for actual combat use like the fragility of the legs, no Armor, slow aiming, overall low accuracy (at least that's what it seems like from the video), ... .

[wanderingfool2]

Honestly, haven't seen anything that makes me think it's not possible from what was stated.  Here are a few counter points

 

Recoil?  Aside from a better design which loads the force more over time, you could also just apply an opposing force to it (e.g. shoot in the opposite direction at the same time...forces cancel out).  Sure other methods can be utilized as well

 

Magazine feeding? Could be easily automated to load clips, it's not exactly a complex task.

 

Higher up weapon? Could utilize a more scissor lift approach.  It's easy enough to do...or a larger dog bot can point easier (and bigger battery so longer runtime)

 

Carrying capacity?  Spot can carry like 14 KG...more than enough.

 

Aiming?  Just needs better software to aim and factor in recoil.  Shouldn't actually be hard.

 

Overall I think the wan show got it roughly right.  It's going to be things like this that are used to help clear areas, and the physical troops coming in later.  Then again the biggest thing is then you can create EMP weapons.

[Mihle]

If you have a gun designed to be used that way it could be less tall but wider instead, and therefore could be placed closer to the robot.

[Montana One-Six]

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Magazine feeding? Could be easily automated to load clips

What? I don't think you know what it takes to reload an SMG like the one used in the video. First of you would need a mechanism that releases the magazine, in case of the SMG from the video it would need to push a lever behind the mag forward. Then another mechanism that pulls out the magazine move it out of way, which then needs to have access to a fresh mag that needs to be moved into the magwell all the way up until the latch (lever you activated earlier) catches it and holds it in place. After that you would need a third mechanism that racks the gun. I mean it is probably possible to create something like that but for what? With all that It would be way to complex, have way to many moving parts that can fail and make the thing way more bulky and top heavy than it already is. It might work in theory but would be impractical in reality.

 

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Carrying capacity?  Spot can carry like 14 KG...more than enough.

The video uses a Chinese copy of spot that is smaller and lighter and can only carry 3kg afaik. Even if you would use the real spot 14kg is nothing especially if you want the bot to be somewhat effective. Which means throwing away that SMG for a belt fed machine gun. A belt fed machine gun like the M249 alone weighs 7-8kg if you add 500 rounds of 5.56 (~6kg) you are pretty close to the 14kg and still don't have any contraption that holds that thing in place. Any machine gun that uses more powerful rounds (which generally would be preferable for an mg) weighs even more plus the ammo weighs more so 14kg definitely is not enough. 

 

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Higher up weapon? Could utilize a more scissor lift approach. 

Which weighs even more than the contraption that is already in use. So the bot can carry even less and since the original carry weight isn't even enough this would be cutting down its very limited effectiveness even further.

 

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Recoil?  Aside from a better design which loads the force more over time, you could also just apply an opposing force to it (e.g. shoot in the opposite direction at the same time...forces cancel out).  Sure other methods can be utilized as well

Same thing. Adding more things just cuts down on it's carry weight and therefore limiting its very limited effectiveness even further. Opposing force? So you are going to shoot yourself just to negate recoil?

 

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Aiming?  Just needs better software to aim and factor in recoil.  Shouldn't actually be hard.

Sure probably can be improved. The biggest issue is that with that high weapon mount the robot takes longer to stabilize itself which means it takes longer to accurately aim at something and hit it especially any follow up shot. If the gun was closer to the body of the bot it would be much easier for the bot to stabilize itself and therefore would be able aim, shoot and hit the target much quicker which would especially effect follow up shots.

 

 

The design is just not good for combat applications. Adding things to alleviate some of the issues don't actually make it better but rather shift the issues around and make other problems more severe. No matter what you tweak on a design that is bad for a certain application it will never get good doing that task. For it to become feasible major redesigns are necessary, meaning stronger more sturdy legs, overall bigger robot, more carry weight, ... .  

[wanderingfool2]

7 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

What? I don't think you know what it takes to reload an SMG like the one used in the video.

I don't think you realize that you can modify things and make iterations.

 

7 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

The video uses a Chinese copy of spot that is smaller and lighter and can only carry 3kg afaik

Technology changes, and the fact is there are better ones out there.  To think that we will remain constant in terms of development would be wrong.  Also 14 kg is a lot [30 pounds?]  You could also modify things to be more weight effective; since you don't have to worry about humans being there/handling it.

 

8 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

Which weighs even more than the contraption that is already in use. So the bot can carry even less and since the original carry weight isn't even enough this would be cutting down its very limited effectiveness even further.

You can make those things lightweight.

 

8 hours ago, Montana One-Six said:

Same thing. Adding more things just cuts down on it's carry weight and therefore limiting its very limited effectiveness even further. Opposing force? So you are going to shoot yourself just to negate recoil?

The whole concept would be that you don't have a person there.  You can also counter the forces in other methods that doesn't end up with a projectile firing backwards.

 

 

The concept is that it could one day used in things like war zones etc.

[Montana One-Six]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The concept is that it could one day used in things like war zones etc.

The design as it is shown in the video even with all your tweaks is still not even close to being able to handle combat tasks like at all. And like I wrote before it needs a major redesign or overhaul to a point where it probably doesn't make any sense to use that bot as a base anymore. Which means it would probably be a better idea to use something that already has the military application in mind like alphadog from the US Marines as a base.

 

But then again there are already tons of projects out there that do what the bot in the video is doing but way more advanced and fit for combat. The biggest difference is all those projects are usually tracked or wheeled and not on 4 legs. There also have been remote controlled combat bots in use with the US Military since the early 2000s. The TALON for example, which is on tracks and a bit bigger than the bot in the video but can actually perform combat tasks much more effectively.

 

 

[tsmspace]

On 7/23/2022 at 3:49 PM, Montana One-Six said:

There are multiple flaws with that design which make it unfeasible for actual combat use or any use really outside of it being a fun gimmick for the range.

 

1. A magazine fed gun is not feasible for any robot because they cannot reload. Which is why pretty much any commercial combat bot you see is using a belt fed machine gun. With that a robot can fire a lot more rounds before any reload would be necessary. The downside of that is a machine gun weighs way more than an SMG plus the hundreds of rounds need to be stored somewhere and also weigh a lot. Which means you need a design that can handle all that weight and that dog is just not made for that.

 

2. Now about the weight of the dog. The robot is way to light which is evident at the amount it moves when shooting a 9mm round. 9mm contrary to what some politicians say is not a powerful round and inadequate as a main armament for most combat environments. Since it struggles so much with 9mm it is probably impossible to use any rifle caliber with that bot while also having a good follow up shot that is somewhat accurate in a timely manner.

 

3. With the gun on top the bot is high centered and would probably struggle with uneven terrain and be restricted to mostly even ground to negate the danger of it falling to its side or rolling. Which could for one break the gun mount, loosen the gun mount or force a zero shift compared to what the robot is trained on which all would take the bot out of the fight.

 

Apart from that there are multiple other factors which would mainly (only) be an issue for actual combat use like the fragility of the legs, no Armor, slow aiming, overall low accuracy (at least that's what it seems like from the video), ... .

1: 1 magazine is enough to be useful.

 

2: if it keeps you out of the line of fire, a 9mm round is enough to be useful.

 

3: all robots and machines have these kinds of limitations, where they are best suited for specific environments, but these environments are inevitably part of the battlefield, which means that if placed effectively they will be useful.

 

4: (your outro) , virtually useless combatants win wars. All conscripts are virtually useless soldiers, and are the backbone of every major war army at least in the modern era. The US famously fields only volunteer professional soldiers, , but they do not have full scale war, they only have small military actions far from home. In the event of a full-scale war, conscription would be carried out, probably the draft, and virtually useless soldiers would be everywhere, making all of the difference. You still need to combat against useless soldiers, which can steer the direction of the battle. You can force your opponent to stop moving to the optimal position, and engage useless soldiers because even as useless as they are, if you do not engage them they will be effective. This can result in delays that are long enough to change the course of the war. If your soldiers need to move into an urban area, and they can walk right in, then they will walk right in and be in the best positions all over town in a few hours. But, if they need to carefully round every corner, wait for backup, move casualties, fire on enemy targets,, then a battle to take a town can last for days, weeks, or the remainder of the war. Useless soldiers can attack logistics successfully, can threaten unguarded infrastructure (forcing a military to disperse it's firepower across a massive area), and can force you to use valuable ordinance you would prefer to save for higher value targets, particularly during times of stressed logistics. (if you are using your bullets, you need more to move forward). 

 

So even though it's a terrible idea to send all kinds of conscripts charging at machine guns to simply die in a heap, it is exactly how wars are won. I would rather you send a useless robot than a useless me thank you. Shoot the plastic all full of bullets. 

[Montana One-Six]

8 hours ago, tsmspace said:

1: 1 magazine is enough to be useful.

How is one mag useful when used by that bot? One it cannot fight anything accurately because it struggles with the recoil. Two it cannot provide much if any cover fire because it cannot shoot long enough since it is limited to one mag plus it cannot sustain fire without falling over.

 

8 hours ago, tsmspace said:

2: if it keeps you out of the line of fire, a 9mm round is enough to be useful.

9mm shot from an SMG is effective to up to ~200m in the hands of a trained soldier. But 9mm is not very useful in any modern combat against enemy soldiers with helmets and body-armor. So if you now factor in that the bot cannot shoot very accurately at longer ranges and the weak performance of the round it's only usefulness would be CQB. The only issue here is that the bot can only shoot in the direction it is looking at, cannot shoot while moving and takes a fairly long time to engage a target. So it also isn't all that useful in CQB in a fighting role. So if it isn't useful at longer ranges and isn't useful in CQB when exactly would it be useful.

 

8 hours ago, tsmspace said:

3: all robots and machines have these kinds of limitations, where they are best suited for specific environments, but these environments are inevitably part of the battlefield, which means that if placed effectively they will be useful.

True. But to be useful in a combat environment it has to meet certain requirements so that it can achieve basic combat effectiveness. With current technology a bot cannot replace a trained Soldier or even a "conscript" but it also shouldn't be much worse than that to ensure it isn't a waste of resources. The design from the video doesn't meet those requirements and basically would be a waste of resources in any conflict.

 

8 hours ago, tsmspace said:

4: (your outro) , virtually useless combatants win wars. All conscripts are virtually useless soldiers, and are the backbone of every major war army at least in the modern era. The US famously fields only volunteer professional soldiers, , but they do not have full scale war, they only have small military actions far from home. In the event of a full-scale war, conscription would be carried out, probably the draft, and virtually useless soldiers would be everywhere, making all of the difference. You still need to combat against useless soldiers, which can steer the direction of the battle. You can force your opponent to stop moving to the optimal position, and engage useless soldiers because even as useless as they are, if you do not engage them they will be effective. This can result in delays that are long enough to change the course of the war. If your soldiers need to move into an urban area, and they can walk right in, then they will walk right in and be in the best positions all over town in a few hours. But, if they need to carefully round every corner, wait for backup, move casualties, fire on enemy targets,, then a battle to take a town can last for days, weeks, or the remainder of the war. Useless soldiers can attack logistics successfully, can threaten unguarded infrastructure (forcing a military to disperse it's firepower across a massive area), and can force you to use valuable ordinance you would prefer to save for higher value targets, particularly during times of stressed logistics. (if you are using your bullets, you need more to move forward). 

That part was somewhat difficult for me to understand, especially what point you are trying to make.

But it seems like you don't understand how the military works. The most glaring misconception is that conscripts are useless, which they defenitly are not. Yes they are usually not as proficient as volunteer soldiers but conscripts at least receive basic infantry training otherwise they wouldn't even make it past their own defensive line. How are you getting those conscripts behind enemy lines so that they are able to attack logistics and all that? It seems like you are confusing conscripts with militias. I don't know where you get all that about infrastructure but you cannot generalize anything like that. Every war is different and fought differently. If you don't have militias or stay-behind units behind enemy lines it will be hard to get them there after the fact. In today's conflicts good, up-to-date and highly accurate intel and numerous, accurate and sophisticated long range strike capabilities are far more important than sheer number of soldiers.

 

8 hours ago, tsmspace said:

So even though it's a terrible idea to send all kinds of conscripts charging at machine guns to simply die in a heap, it is exactly how wars are won.

Wars have evolved and popular tactics like these that were used mainly in WWI and WWII (even there to a much lesser degree, especially if you take soviet Russia out of the equation) are not so effective these days and using that tactic in modern war against an even enemy will maybe gain you small victories but you will run out of combatants after a short while and most likely will lose the war because of it.

[tsmspace]

1 hour ago, Montana One-Six said:

How is one mag useful when used by that bot? One it cannot fight anything accurately because it struggles with the recoil. Two it cannot provide much if any cover fire because it cannot shoot long enough since it is limited to one mag plus it cannot sustain fire without falling over.

 

9mm shot from an SMG is effective to up to ~200m in the hands of a trained soldier. But 9mm is not very useful in any modern combat against enemy soldiers with helmets and body-armor. So if you now factor in that the bot cannot shoot very accurately at longer ranges and the weak performance of the round it's only usefulness would be CQB. The only issue here is that the bot can only shoot in the direction it is looking at, cannot shoot while moving and takes a fairly long time to engage a target. So it also isn't all that useful in CQB in a fighting role. So if it isn't useful at longer ranges and isn't useful in CQB when exactly would it be useful.

 

True. But to be useful in a combat environment it has to meet certain requirements so that it can achieve basic combat effectiveness. With current technology a bot cannot replace a trained Soldier or even a "conscript" but it also shouldn't be much worse than that to ensure it isn't a waste of resources. The design from the video doesn't meet those requirements and basically would be a waste of resources in any conflict.

 

That part was somewhat difficult for me to understand, especially what point you are trying to make.

But it seems like you don't understand how the military works. The most glaring misconception is that conscripts are useless, which they defenitly are not. Yes they are usually not as proficient as volunteer soldiers but conscripts at least receive basic infantry training otherwise they wouldn't even make it past their own defensive line. How are you getting those conscripts behind enemy lines so that they are able to attack logistics and all that? It seems like you are confusing conscripts with militias. I don't know where you get all that about infrastructure but you cannot generalize anything like that. Every war is different and fought differently. If you don't have militias or stay-behind units behind enemy lines it will be hard to get them there after the fact. In today's conflicts good, up-to-date and highly accurate intel and numerous, accurate and sophisticated long range strike capabilities are far more important than sheer number of soldiers.

 

Wars have evolved and popular tactics like these that were used mainly in WWI and WWII (even there to a much lesser degree, especially if you take soviet Russia out of the equation) are not so effective these days and using that tactic in modern war against an even enemy will maybe gain you small victories but you will run out of combatants after a short while and most likely will lose the war because of it.

In some ways wars have evolved and in other ways, wars are fought by whatever means are available. There are "wars" or other armed conflict right now in europe, the middle east, africa, southeast asia, south america, , and none of these are carried out using what would be considered "modern warfare" strategies. The US is not fighting Russia directly, and so Ukraine is the closest thing to this kind of warfare being carried out right now, but combat is not limited to the most sophisticated forces. Also, in the United States, we have the potential to have a lot of armed conflict, as crime, political unrest, and militant immigration threaten to outbreak into general chaos completely devoid of traditional battle lines. War will potentially have clean cut lines and fronts, but this is by no means the most common situation in the present day geo-political environment. SOME armed forces may fight using these clear cut environmental conditions of obvious front lines and targets, but in the even of such an outbreak, these armed forces will not be the only ones to engage in military conflict. All of the cartels, street gangs, revolutionaries, etc. will actively kill to take control of assets, resources, turf/territory, and the potential for fighting to occur will be hardly limited to the primary armed forces of the most organized nations. 

[Montana One-Six]

9 hours ago, tsmspace said:

In some ways wars have evolved and in other ways, wars are fought by whatever means are available. There are "wars" or other armed conflict right now in europe, the middle east, africa, southeast asia, south america, , and none of these are carried out using what would be considered "modern warfare" strategies. The US is not fighting Russia directly, and so Ukraine is the closest thing to this kind of warfare being carried out right now, but combat is not limited to the most sophisticated forces. Also, in the United States, we have the potential to have a lot of armed conflict, as crime, political unrest, and militant immigration threaten to outbreak into general chaos completely devoid of traditional battle lines. War will potentially have clean cut lines and fronts, but this is by no means the most common situation in the present day geo-political environment. SOME armed forces may fight using these clear cut environmental conditions of obvious front lines and targets, but in the even of such an outbreak, these armed forces will not be the only ones to engage in military conflict. All of the cartels, street gangs, revolutionaries, etc. will actively kill to take control of assets, resources, turf/territory, and the potential for fighting to occur will be hardly limited to the primary armed forces of the most organized nations. 

How does all this change anything regarding the bot from the video and it's usefulness in a potential armed conflict?

 

First of strategies and tactics are different things.

 

I also think you don't understand the whole modern warfare thing, because modern warfare (which is ever-evolving) isn't a different thing compared to just warfare. It is just a word that shows that warfare tactics have been modified and changed to address and take into account modern advancements in weapons technology. So if you were living in the 1940s you would say WWII was modern warfare or using modern warfare tactics because warfare has been modified to take technological advancements of that time into account. Which means there are 100% conflicts on this planet right now that are modern warfare or using modern warfare tactics. Since you mentioned Europe the current war in Ukraine is a fairly modern war with modern warfare tactics.

Which doesn't mean the US or NATO would fight the same way since their approach to warfare is a bit different but Ukraine and Russia are using modern warfare tactics. 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

On 7/23/2022 at 9:40 AM, tsmspace said:

The thing about machines, is no one wants the one that's good, and at first it's not clear it IS the good one, but,, the winner always is that weird not good one that if you know, you can predict it. 

Ghost Robotics provides robot dogs that patrol the USA mexico borders. Their gun design is still top mounted, it's likely more of a single shot sniper design with dedicated optics, and possibly extended magazine.

 

It's just a matter of engineering (lots of it) to attach a good gun to a robot quadruped. It's also just engineering to make it automated.

[tsmspace]

So,,, what if the gun was hung UNDER the body of the dog?? Maybe the dogs legs were lengthened a bit if needed,