As militaries are building up their capabilities these days to confront regular and irregular armies, they are relying more and more on robots to perform more missions. The Americans and their allies are developing more advanced drones that can bring the fight to the enemy rather than just do surveillance or target individual targets. Now with Artificial Intelligence, getting more developed, they are slowly being implemented into robots, much to objections of those who think that when we might not be able to control AI machines in the future.

For the Russians, they are not far behind. Even if they do not have drones as advanced as Western militaries, they are working hard to catch-up in this field. Just recently, scientists from the Russian Foundation for Advanced Studies revealed what they have been working on this time, a robot soldier which the media called “Ivan the Terminator.”

Inspired by the “Iron Man” movie, Ivan is a humanoid robot, which basically has hands and feet as compared to the military robots of the U.S. which use tracked wheels or more animal-like four legs. According to the report of Russian daily, Komsomolskaya Pravda, building a specialized robot for the Russian military is one the priorities and for Ivan, it will be deployed in areas where there is the highest risk for human soldiers, such as risk of explosions, high background radiation, or other conditions where humans cannot survive long enough.With its built-in AI, Ivan can drive cars and scan the roads, deciding which road to take.  If the road is blocked, it simply stops the vehicle.

Ivan can also be controlled by a human operator. Using a specialized sensor suit, the operator can control the robot remotely up to several miles. The robot will be able to mimic the movements of the operator and the operator can see what Ivan sees and senses with the cameras and sensors.

The robot will be subjected to “maturity” tests  in which it will be programmed to take specialized tasks. It is in the experimental stage for now and NATO can rest a bit easy as it is not likely to be deployed in conflict areas where Russia is involved such as in Ukraine and Syria.

Apart from Ivan The Terminator, Russian is also working on other autonomous vehicles such as planes and armoured vehicles. They still have a lot of catching up to do, but any incremental development in this area will give them more capabilities that the NATO can be worried about.

The revelation of Ivan, the humanoid soldier, can be unsettling. Calling it “Ivan the Terminator” is even more unsettling as indeed it reminds of the robots that are bent in extinguishing the human race in the “Terminator” movie and television series. The future of warfare will indeed involve the use of robots.