We see a lot of robots out there. Boston Dynamics is making some great ones, all modelled after real animals that we can’t even compete with in their animal forms, but the US Military is also building a couple of interesting models. There’s no doubt that their efforts, like the MUTT, are designed for the express purpose of putting holes into other things rather than sprinting naturally on a treadmill, though.
MUTT stands for Multi-Utility Tactical Transport and yes, there’s a machine gun mounted on a swivel on top of it. Why? If you’re a member of the military the answer to that is “Why not?”, but putting a menacing mini-tank that doesn’t have a human operator in sight on a battlefield will probably be enough to clear out the less committed. Or they’ll use it for RPG practice. Who knows.
The video below shows off a little something of what the MUTT can do. You see it in action at the S2ME2 ANTX 2017 event, which is a military thing that even Stuff doesn’t crack an invite to. Just as well, because we’d want to drive the thing and, worse, someone might let us. The carnage would be spectacular.
The MUTT was demonstrated by the US Navy and a company called General Dynamics Land Systems and, well… look at it. Sarah Connor would hyperventilate just looking at that thing, especially if it was capable of connecting to the internet. Luckily this thing is mostly autonomo-… wait, no it’s not. The Multi-Utility Tactical Transport is remote controlled, meaning that there’s a wireless connection for Skynet to take over one day.
The good news is that the machine gun model isn’t the only one out there — this one just looks the coolest, though its effects are also likely to be the most brutal if it is ever actually used in combat. Happily, most MUTTs are designed to carry equipment around from place to place. We prefer that. A robot uprising of luggage handlers is a little more survivable.
Source: via Gizmodo