iRobot, the company who sells the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner to finance their darker, more nefarious aims, has secured a military contract worth around $32 million to build a dark, nefarious remote-control robot for the U.S. Army. The Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV, or suuuh-gaaaah-vuh) isn’t a combat drone, but instead will be used to reconnoiter and scout areas too “inaccessible or too dangerous for humans.”
Despite my laudanum-fueled fantasy, the SUGV will not be a military-grade Roomba, aimlessly wandering battlefields on the grid, slurping up enemy combatants.
