Humanoid robots could one day take over some of the most dangerous tasks in war in place of flesh-and-blood soldiers – and a startup is already testing the idea in Ukraine.
Sankaet Pathak, co-founder and CEO of Foundation, said there was a “moral obligation” to send humanoid robots to the front lines instead of putting them “in kitchens.”
“I thought all this home use stuff was kind of stupid,” Pathak told Business Insider. “I think people can make their own coffee and fold their laundry. I thought, ‘We need to do something different.'”
Read too
Advances in drone technology and robotics are now central to the modern warfare arsenal, enabling precision attacks at scale and at lower cost; however, this capability has not always resulted in clean, risk-free operations.
In the era of smart weapons and AI-powered autonomous systems, modern warfare continues to pose a high risk of civilian casualties, particularly in densely populated urban areas.
Pathak said the current approach to warfare is often “brute force,” which involves either risking soldiers’ lives or destroying a building to eliminate a single target.
He believes that in the future, humanoids could perform “precise” operations, such as kidnapping a target. In the short term, they could support military operations such as reconnaissance and logistics.
Foundation said it recently conducted a test that could pave the way for such missions.
In February, the startup sent two of its Phantom robots to an undisclosed location in Ukraine for a closed pilot demonstration.
“You hear bombs exploding. You hear the power going out. You’re in the middle of a war zone,” Pathak said of Foundation’s visit to the country, which has been fighting a Russian invasion for years. “As soon as you leave Kiev, most places are a battlefield.”
The CEO explained that the Phantom test focused solely on “supply pickup” to demonstrate that bipedal robots can effectively “transport supplies from the outside to the inside and prevent a soldier from being shot at.”
There was “a lot of interest in what was communicated to the company,” Pathak said. A spokesperson for Foundation said the startup also signed a $24 million contract with the Pentagon. Eric Trump, the president’s son, was named chief strategist in March.
Humanoid troops are not yet operational
Pathak said he did not want to “overstate” the pilot project in Ukraine. There remains a large gap between a humanoid who can slowly clean a test kitchen and one who can use an M4 carbine in a firefight on the battlefield.
Battery life and durability are among the limitations. Pathak said robot soldiers need longer battery life and must be able to withstand water, dust and shock.
Reliable manipulation – the ability of a robot to pick up an object and do something with it, such as pulling the trigger on a gun – also remains a major technological obstacle.
“Currently the big technical hurdle is to build a highly dexterous hand that is reliable and easier to manufacture, not too massive and not too expensive,” Pathak said.
The CEO made ambitious predictions for overcoming these challenges, stating that key technical hurdles could be overcome within a few years and that humanoid robots could perform complex missions such as target acquisition within five to 10 years.
Robots should get permission from humans before killing other humans
Beyond the technical issues, there are also ethical dilemmas to consider surrounding autonomous weapons, including concerns about accountability when humans are no longer involved in the decision-making process.
Pathak said that while there is no easy line to draw around autonomy, under normal circumstances “you probably want to have a human in the loop before any kind of killing operation is triggered.” Many Western militaries have made this a priority given rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, although the extent remains actively debated.
Read too
“So if you actually need to fire a weapon, you need a human to actually approve it, which is also the case with drones today,” he said. “But even in these cases there are exceptions, such as an anti-drone cannon or the Iron Dome system. With these you cannot wait for human reaction times, as the alternative is a 100 percent certainty of death.”
Race for AI weapons
The defense industry as a whole is pushing robotics and autonomous weapons as a national security issue. Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril, has repeatedly stated that the United States needs to get ahead of China in AI weapons. The top U.S. admiral in the Pacific said this week that the U.S. lead over China in AI technology is only six months to a year at best.
Unlike many other companies, Foundation has been particularly vocal about the use of humanoids on the battlefield.
“Courage is a scarce commodity,” Pathak said, arguing that there is no similar debate about military humanoids in China and that the United States, Europe and their allies need to be vigilant. “When you build a utopia,” he said, “you have to be able to defend it.”