Rob, the military, especially DARPA, has been a big driver of
these robots, and they certainly have the funding. The basic
platform of search and rescue and surveillance/reconnaissance
robots, as are most of those shown here, can be then easily
customized for other first responder uses, such as police and
firefighters, who have no budgets. And no, these are not recent.
Early drones appeared in the 1990s. Boston Dynamics, one of the
main pioneers, started in 1992. Depending on how you define
them, the development of military robots can be seen as starting
as far back as WWII. We like think in terms of our robots taking
the brunt of casualties in warfare, but how about when the enemy
has robots also? Our robots might save our lives, but their
robots will cost us lives. We can't have it both ways. Still
there is no stopping the production of robot killers.If we fail
to produce them, someone else surly will. And they will no doubt
use them against us at some time. Further robot killers,
otherwise known as Termina