Fair dinkum...

Erm, yes, more robots.

Australia is launching a competition for war robots.

I've already covered this thing here a lot, so I'm just putting down a marker to note how things are moving, we've gone from the realm of the speculative to practical aspirational political policy - and if Australia is doing it, then every tech savvy industrial power will be thinking about it.

The government wants to develop an "intelligent and fully autonomous system" capable of carrying out dangerous surveillance missions.

Senior officials in Canberra have said they hope that unarmed robotic vehicles will do some of the army's "dirty work" in such hazardous theatres.

The ultimate plan is for groups of these sophisticated machines to be sent into battle to help neutralise the enemy.

Heh, unarmed eh? Unarmed neutralising, what, by guiding unmanned drones to targets? Hmmm, nice.

Anyway, below, a small picture of the future...