When you have a 1,360 square mile military facility that needs patrolling, robots are the way to go, or at least that’s the position starting to be adopted by the US Army. Why? Simple: using mobile robots instead of permanent infrastructure (like fixed cameras and motion detectors) saves $6 million in up-front costs plus an additional $1 million a year in maintenance.

The robots being used at the Hawthorne Army Depot (which stores tens of millions of cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste) are somewhat unsexily called MDARS (Mobile Detection Assessment Response Systems). They’re diesel powered, with a top speed of 20 mph, and they can stay on duty for 16 hours. Most of the time, MDARS do random fully autonomous patrols, using RFID tags to check the status of locks and gates. If they notice something out of the ordinary, a human can take over, using cameras, microphones, and speakers to interact with whatever needs interacting with. The bots are currently unarmed, so short of running someone over they can’t do much more than observe, although they are certainly capable of mounting remote controlled weapons.

[ NNSA Press Release ] VIA [ Danger Room ]