Russian media are reporting their country’s advanced military projects arm has built a combat android controlled by a remote human user.
Andrey Grigoryev, director-general of the Advanced Research Projects Foundation (ARF), told RIA-Novosti:
"A combat robot-android, that resembles a human in appearance, by the end of the year will be able to run, cross a barrier line and perform other actions, according to our plans."
ARF is the Russian reply to DARPA, the Pentagon’s hi-tech development agency in the US responsible for futuristic battlefield concepts like a robotic cheetah and self-guided bullets.
According to RT, Russian President Vladimir Putin first saw the combat android back in January and described it as a “scene from a science-fiction film."
It will be controlled via new brain-computer interface technology, which apparently does exactly what you might think it would – allow a human brain to control technology remotely.
While the ARF claims its android will be up and running by the end of the year, they say it isn’t designed to “run around with a rifle”. They already have autonomous tracked and wheeled platforms that can do that much better.
Here’s a video of Putin watching the android go through its paces back in January:
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