Already outnumbered by its adversarial neighbor’s army, South Korea is experimenting with using armed robots to help guard the demilitarized zone that divides the country from North Korea. South Korea currently has 655,000 troops to defend itself against North Korea’s 1.2 million-strong force, and the disparity in military sizes may grow even wider as South Korea’s declining birth rate makes it more difficult for leaders in Seoul to maintain troop numbers in the future.
That’s why the government has purchased some prototype robots from
Samsung Techwin Co. at a cost of $330,000 each to see if they can take the place of human soldiers in some areas of the DMZ. The SGR-A1 robots, first announced four years ago, are equipped with heat and motion detectors to sense possible threats, and armed with machine guns and 40mm automatic grenade launchers. The robot’s camera can detect a target up to 500 meters away.
-Noel Brinkerhoff