The military goal is to have approximately 30% of the army be robotic forces by somewhere around 2020.

War casualties are typically kept behind tightly closed doors, but one company keeps the mangled pieces of its first casualty on display. This is no ordinary soldier, though—it is Packbot from iRobot Corporation.

Robots in the military are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Washington University in St. Louis's Doug Few and Bill Smart are on the cutting edge of this new wave of technology.

"When the military says 'robot' they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots," says Smart, Ph.D., WUSTL assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

All of the army's robotic force is teleoperated, meaning that there is someone operating the robot from a remote location, perhaps with a joystick and a computer screen. While this may seem like a caveat in plans to add robots to the military, it is actually very important to keep humans involved in the robotic operations.

Already in support roles

Robots are already finding a place among deployed troops. There are unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots for explosives detection. Robotics advancements do, however, raise new ethical questions, such as where to place the blame if a robot kills someone. Nevertheless, as the technology progresses, more robots are being sent into battle first. The mangled Packbot on display at iRobot is just one such example of a fortunate casualty.