The Rise of Robots

Pravin Sawhney | Bengaluru

If things go according to plan, the Indian Army would have indigenous robots for border patrolling and early response in a decade. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven robots “cannot replace soldiers but would complement them by helping them in surveillance” says Chief Scientist, Manoj Jain, who heads the defence public sector undertaking Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL)’s Central Research Laboratory (CRL) at Bangalore.

Indian Army and border guarding forces continue to deploy substantive human resource on manning the military
lines as well as the borders.With BEL-made robots, border management is likely to become less tedious,
less human-intensive and more efficient

The CRL has built technology demonstrators of first responder robots (meant for search and surveillance), and plan to have prototypes ready in one year, after which they could be given to the user (army) for trials and acceptance. Once done, they would be inducted into the service where they would work with and under human supervision. Robots, unlike humans, would not suffer from fatigue and would need little rest to deliver round the clock.

Giving credit to the secretary, defence production, Jain says that CRL is working in mission-mode to meet the users’ (all three services) requirements. After the defence ministry’s AI Task Force was set up, the services were asked to give their requirements. The army asked for use of AI in border management, gun management and electronic warfare management through its Director General Information System (DGIS). The air force evinced interest in image-based tracking and guidance in GPS denied environment, ground-based air defence system and so on, while the navy desired AI supported swarm technology and ships’ combat management system to name a few. According to Jain, all services are keen on AI based C4I (command, control, communication and intelligence) systems for good situational awareness. Before assessing how this would be done, a bit on AI itself would be in order.

1
AI is about simulating human intelligence in machines, especially computers, in three steps: learn, reason and self-correct. The computer is fed information (data) and rules for using information based upon which the machine on its own (reasons) comes up with approximate or definitive sol