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Comment by clarkmoody | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for the demo of a robot placing accurate shots at full-auto with a standard issue rifle -- on multiple targets.

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Accurate gunners NEVER fire on fully auto. When I was the commander's gunner behind a .50 cal cruising in a humvee around Baghdad and (more often) Mosul, Iraq... You fire controlled 8-10 round bursts or 3-5 round bursts if you aren't trying to go nuts.

Perfect aim and fully auto are mutually exclusive. That is why the M16A1, which was used in Vietnam as the standard issue rifle, was replaced with the no longer fully auto M16A2. The A2 has safe, fire, and 3 round burst. The fully auto selector was removed as soldiers just wasted a lot of ammo and burned up barrels.

I believe that is the point. A human doesn't have the timing/strength to accurately shoot in full auto, a robot possibly can.

The robot still wouldn't want to shoot on auto. It might shoot as fast as auto, but it would want to decide & control when each round goes off, rather than rely on the fixed timing of the auto mechanism

I believe that is my point. The timing and strength has nothing to do with it. I was the commander's gunner on a .50 caliber machine gun because I was a good shot. The barrel "travels" upwards. It isn't really about holding it down, it is just the physics.

Have you ever fired a fully automatic weapon?

-- while in motion.

In all seriousness it was running a good 20kph in the video, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing was deployed alongside canine units. Perhaps even apprehending vehicles?

The cheetah has great speed but its real power is it's turning ability: cars can go fast but they require a serious amount of space and time to reverse direction safely.

It's called the goalkeeper ciws. Look it up on YouTube. Well, to be fair, that is not a standard issue rifle. But the principle is no different, and we are just a few years or tens of years from the correct servo technology.

As cool as it would be technically, I don't want to see that...

http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/

Doesn't seem that hard to accomplish - all the tech is there, gyroscopic stabilizers, auto feed and trigger, targeting systems, etc. - it would all consume a lot of power, though...

...all of which are more feasible on an MBT, or weapon station (which is robotic, by the way)

http://www.realsentrygun.com/Prototypes.htm

so is the US military

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