Military Robots – High-Tech Military Weapons (published 2007)

You are an American soldier, having a long, hard day. You've been on patrol for hours on the streets of a foreign city. Your feet are sore, and you are baking under a hot sun. Sand and dust are everywhere - up your nose and clogging your throat. You wear goggles to protect your eyes. Bombs pose a constant and deadly threat to you. These explosives are usually hidden in cars parked by the side of the roads you must patrol.

A fellow soldier spots an unmarked package under a pickup truck. If it's a bomb, it could explode. You call the bomb disposal team, the soldiers whose job is to get rid of bombs that have not detonated, or exploded. This is a very dangerous job, even for soldiers with special training. The team decides not to send a person to do the job. Instead, they use

a strange machine that rolls along on tank treads. It has a mechanical arm and its "head" is a video camera. It looks like something out of a science fiction film, but this is no Hollywood movie. This real robot is controlled by a soldier standing hundreds of feet away. The robot rolls over to the vehicle and carefully removes the unmarked package from beneath it. It carries the package into a nearby field, out of harm's way, where a controlled explosion safely destroys it. That's when you realize that robots are becoming a part of today's military, and they're already making the work of flesh and blood soldiers much easier.

Contents of the book

• Introduction
• Why Robots?
• War Machines
• Robot Evolution
• Marine Machines
• Bots in the Twenty-first Century
• New Words
• For Further Reading
• Resources
• Index
• About the Author