What Happened To Scooby Doo
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 1:04 am
Back in September of 2007, the Washington Post wrote an article about ground robots in action in Afghanistan and Iraq. We posted some excerpts that referred to one particular iRobot PackBot named Scooby Doo, who was destroyed in the line of duty while attempting to disarm an IED. It turns out that that particular robot (what’s left of it, anyway) is on display at iRobot headquarters.
Here’s the excerpt about Scooby Doo from the Post article… And if you want a sense of what Scooby’s last few moments might have been like, watch this video.
Ted Bogosh recalls one day in Camp Victory, near Baghdad, when he was a Marine master sergeant running the robot repair shop.
That day, an explosive ordnance disposal technician walked through his door. The EODs, as they are known, are the people who — with their robots — are charged with disabling Iraq’s most virulent scourge, the roadside improvised explosive device. In this fellow’s hands was a small box. It contained the remains of his robot. He had named it Scooby-Doo.
“There wasn’t a whole lot left of Scooby,” Bogosh says. The biggest piece was its 3-by-3-by-4-inch head, containing its video camera. On the side had been painted “its battle list, its track record. This had been a really great robot.”
Scooby’s score was 1 car bomb, 17 IEDs, and 1 piece of unexploded ordinance. More, after the jump.
The veteran explosives technician looming over Bogosh was visibly upset. He insisted he did not want a new robot. He wanted Scooby-Doo back.
“Sometimes they get a little emotional over it,” Bogosh says. “Like having a pet dog. It attacks the IEDs, comes back, and attacks again. It becomes part of the team, gets a name. They get upset when anything happens to one of the team. They identify with the little robot quickly. They count on it a lot in a mission.”
The bots even show elements of “personality,” Bogosh says. “Every robot has its own little quirks. You sort of get used to them. Sometimes you get a robot that comes in and it does a little dance, or a karate chop, instead of doing what it’s supposed to do.” The operators “talk about them a lot, about the robot doing its mission and getting everything accomplished.” He remembers the time “one of the robots happened to get its tracks destroyed while doing a mission.” The operators “duct-taped them back on, finished the mission and then brought the robot back” to a hero’s welcome.
Near the Tigris River, operators even have been known to take their bot fishing. They put a fishing rod in its claw and retire back to the shade, leaving the robot in the sun.
Of the fish, Bogosh says, “Not sure if we ever caught one or not.”
You really should read the entire article, but if you don’t have time, here are a few other passages that are pretty cool:
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become an unprecedented field study in human relationships with intelligent machines. These conflicts are the first in history to see widespread deployment of thousands of battle bots. Flying bots range in size from Learjets to eagles. Some ground bots are like small tanks. Others are the size of two-pound dumbbells, designed to be thrown through a window to scope out the inside of a room. Bots search caves for bad guys, clear roads of improvised explosive devices, scoot under cars to look for bombs, spy on the enemy and, sometimes, kill humans.
Even more startling than these machines’ capabilities, however, are the effects they have on their friendly keepers who, for example, award their bots “battlefield promotions” and “purple hearts.” “Ours was called Sgt. Talon,” says Sgt. Michael Maxson of the 737th Ordnance Company (EOD). “We always wanted him as our main robot. Every time he was working, nothing bad ever happened. He always got the job done. He took a couple of detonations in front of his face and didn’t stop working. One time, he actually did break down in a mission, and we sent another robot in and it got blown to pieces. It’s like he shut down because he knew something bad would happen.” The troops promoted the robot to staff sergeant — a high honor, since that usually means a squad leader. They also awarded it three “purple hearts.”
When Greg Harbin was piloting one of the first Predators over Bosnia from his desk in Hungary, he wasn’t actively trying to become the first UAV operator in history to be awarded a medal. He was trying to avoid becoming the first UAV pilot to incinerate a schoolyard full of children.
The then-32-year-old Air Force captain’s bot was “dead square right over the city” of Mostar, looking for snipers, when its engine conked out. As it spiraled down, still carrying 2,000 gallons of fuel, Harbin could see on his screen, through the cross hairs of the nose camera, that “it was dead-centered on that school. If I’d allowed that thing to hit into that school, could you imagine?” he recalls. “I would be the first guy in the history of the world to kill somebody with an unmanned aircraft.”
Using the kind of fancy flying he’d learned as a fighter pilot, and only the 15 minutes’ worth of battery power he had left, he miraculously pulled the bot out of its spiral and found an airstrip run by the French. To make sure the barely-under-control bot didn’t hit all their transport planes, he intentionally crash-landed it on their runway. “The French were pretty funny on the radio. They didn’t know what it was. They videotaped the whole thing.”
But that’s not the significant part.
As he was struggling to bring the bot down without an engine, he could see “the ground coming real fast.” He dropped the landing gear, flared the wings, pushed the stick forward and then started fumbling around at the bottom of his desk chair.
He had bonded so tightly with the machine hundreds of miles away that he was searching for the lever that would allow him to eject.
[ Washington Post ]
Images VIA [ CNET ]
Comments (2)
Category: Military
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Comment by Joey1058
Made Friday, 17 of April , 2009 at 6:38 am
Can you imagine when these bots actually get enough AI where it can communicate with you in a normal conversation?
“Sarge, you want me to go in there and do what?!”
Comment by Mike
Made Wednesday, 27 of May , 2009 at 11:16 am
someday the bots will be AI.
will they be buried with honors?