Fully Dissociated Soldiers

All sorts of government contracts are awarded to companies for specialized robots, like mine-clearing vehicles, pocket rovers with cameras, yadda yadda blah blah blah. None of those are good enough, because you have to have one different device to do each different task, and your soldiers are still out in the field and in harm's way.

'Bakers, I give you the Fully Dissociated Soldier, or FDS.*

The FDS would be a simple tracked robot, standing slightly shorter than a man. Made of stainless steel panels sandwiching Kevlar fibers and ceramic panels to protect the electronic innards, it would basically be a rolling set of cameras with two gun arms and autoclips.

Now, I'm going to do my best to defend this from the obvious WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR cries, from the crowd which has seen "Short Circuit," but that basic physical design is pretty close to what I'm thinking. Physically. I'm not calling for shoulder-mounted lasers, and I'm not calling for AI or the ability to follow spoken orders and automatically obtain targets, because all of those are just silly and well outside of my scope of knowledge.

A real-time video feed from cameras mounted in the four cardinal directions from the FDS's head would be sent to a console where the controller has a series of data lines including global position, remaining ammunition (in-gun and clips), remaining battery power, et cetera. The video would be windowed, with the largest portion going to the frontal feed, of course. A targeting reticule from the firearms could be overlayed on the video screen, similar to HUD displays.

The arms (and weapons) of the FDS would be managed through a two telemetric arms, measuring the motion of the controller's arms through space and then relaying that to the FDS. Triggers on the ends of the telemetry arms would, of course, fire the weapons. Independent fingers seem a bit much at this point, so guns could be mounted anywhichway you want.

Motion and rotation would be controlled by two foot pedals, corresponding to the two tracks of the FDS. Push both down, go forward. Push right one down, rotate right. Mounting the fulcrum of the pedals to the center, allowing full rocker motion, would make 180-degree turns a snap (left up, right down).

The only serious problem I can easily forsee with this idea is the computers controlling the device. Radio signals travel at the speed of light, but computers do not - so lightweight programming and decent processors are the key. Modern actuators and motor control systems are fully capable of making the necessary joints move at the same speeds as humans, and tracked vehicles can travel pretty quickly.

And there's not a human being out there getting shot at, which is always a plus.

*I admit, I chose what seemed like a pretty unassuming acronym for a reason: most complex acronyms seem really stilted.

EDIT: [gnomethang], I see your link, and I thought about it - but there is no way that such a system would ever take hold, as it doesn't allow for anything like insurgencies, civil wars, and what-have you - so I consider it unrealistic. Besides, it's just like "Robot Jox," which is a movie I hated.