Because our thumbs may get tired from droning everyone to death, robots with guns and grenades might soon be fighting alongside U.S. ground troops. Maybe within five years. From Allen McDuffee at Wired:

“Robots armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank missiles and even grenade launchers are marching, er, rolling ever closer to the battlefield now that they’ve shown they can actually hit what they’re supposed to.

Four robotics companies — HDT Robotics, iRobot, Northrop Grumman and QinetiQ — recently ran their M240 machine gun-armed robots through a live-fire demo at Fort Benning in what has been dubbed the ‘Robotic Rodeo.’ The point was to give the brass a chance to see just how viable such systems are.

The Army, which issued a favorable assessment of the technology last week, doesn’t see our armed robotic overlords as weapons taking the place of boots on the ground, but rather as combatants working alongside troops in the field.

‘They’re not just tools, but members of the squad. That’s the goal,’ Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning told Computerworld.“