It’s all laughs when we see the Spot robot in the public at the Olympic Games, as a security inspector or a garden cleaner. But what would happen if we put a sniper rifle on its back? It is the idea that they have used in Sword Defense Systems, with the somewhat disturbing aspect that you can see in the header image.
Targets over 1 km and thermal vision to shoot in the middle of the night
The proposal is very serious and is baptized with the name of Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle or SPUR. It consists of a 7.7 kg precision rifle prepared to be mounted on top of four-legged robots like Spot, capable of firing at targets up to 1.2 km away.
The weapon has a ceramic coating, a material difficult to locate with night vision goggles; and its design makes the recoil caused by its shots bearable by the robot that carries the rifle. Its magazine is for 10 6.5mm bullets and it has a thermal viewfinder with a 30x zoom.
French Army tests Spot in combat scenarios: Boston Dynamics robot handles reconnaissance tasks
At the moment this rifle has only been presented and it is unknown if there are agencies interested in buying it, but Ghost Robotics has not hesitated to mention the United States special operations forces when announcing the weapon on Twitter. A squad of these four-legged snipers could go on missions that humans deem too risky.
— This article was automatically translated from its original language —
