China has turned robotics into a state issue. In the last five-year plan, the country made clear its total commitment to autonomous robots, agentic AIthe development of your semiconductor industry and 6G as the great ‘cloud’ to give life to Physical AI. Within the technological commitment, we already knew that robot dogs were of great importance. What we didn’t expect is that they already had packs of robodogs ready to go into action.
And all this under a brain that makes them work like a swarm.
Robowolves. The Asian giant has been performing simulations with these robot dogs armed. The advantage of these units is that the base is the same for all, but they can be customized so that they carry whatever is needed: from weapons to sensors of all kinds.
Each one weighs about 70 kilos and can carry another 25 kilos, so the versatility when it comes to having ‘extras’ for attack, reconnaissance, transportation and supplies is maximum. And they can be operated remotely by humans, but the key to the Chinese system presented by the state channel CCTV (as stated SCMP) is that they can also be under the control of a central AI.
Herd. We have already mentioned that one of China’s objectives is physical AI, AI being the software that controls – the brain – and the robot the hardware that has contact with the real world -the dog-. Within a show of force, television highlights operations such as “urban cleanup” in which a pack of ‘wolves’ operates through a shared detection network that acts as a collective brain.
It is an autonomous mode and decision-making is joint within the group. As in a pack of flesh and blood wolves, each one has different roles. And they have names. ‘Shadow’ is the recognition, giving information about the situation to the rest of the group. ‘Polar’ is the one that offers logistical support and ‘Bloody’, as its name suggests, is the one that can carry weapons such as grenade launchers, missile launchers and automatic rifles.
What’s scarier is that the group can automatically maneuver into tactical formations thanks to that swarm control system to surround targets, block them, and ultimately open fire. One of those responsible for researching the Atlas weapons system in China pointed out that these drones “understand” the intentions of others and can execute collaborative actions even in the absence of communication signals with the command. Utility? Operate in situations where satellite signals are not available.
An example of one of the ‘Polar’
Limitations. Although it may seem like science fiction – and it is – these units are not perfect. The army itself has revealed on occasion that robodogs lack armor, so they are easily shot down even with light fire. They have recognized that the idea is no longer to achieve perfection, but to advance in the demonstration that they can replace human troops with robots, minimizing casualties in the event of open conflict.
There is also something more underlying: as in a pack, the strength is not in the individual, but in operating together as CCTV claims these swarms of robots can do. And another limitation (and thank goodness) is that, although robots are capable of identifying and focusing on targets autonomously, they cannot attack without human confirmation.
And a ‘Bloody’
show of strength. The reports shared by CCTV indicate that the algorithms of this system allow collaborative tasks to be carried out between different types of weapons. For example, coordinating attacks between ground and aerial drones, but also guiding laser weapons. One case is an algorithm that allows robots to prioritize targets, such as neutralizing the most threatening ones first, leaving less important targets aside.
And Zhang Wei, a researcher at the China Electronics Technology Group corporation, pointed out that the goal is to achieve robots with “full autonomy on a large scale”, a scenario in which many different drones operate collaboratively without human intervention, achieving objectives and making decisions in complex missions autonomously.
Total commitment to robotics. As always, you have to take anything that comes from any government with a grain of salt when talking about this type of thing, since (and even more so now) propaganda is super important. However, it is undeniable that China is betting heavily on the development of robotics and that these robowolves are not a render like the ‘space destroyer’ that they showed a few weeks ago.
They are already carrying out simulated missions and we have seen them in other scenarios, such as in the daily life of different firefighting units. helping carry out reconnaissance missions and firefighting. And, deep down, I can’t get out of my head how cool these things were when we saw them in the movies and how scary it is when they seem to be one step away from becoming a reality.
Image | CCTV/China
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