South Korea unveils gun-toting sentry robot

Seoul: South Korea has unveiled a high-tech, machine-gun toting sentry robot that could support its troops in detecting and suppressing intruders along the heavily fortified border with North Korea. “The Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot has surveillance, tracking, firing and voice recognition systems built into a single unit,” said Lee Jae-Hoon, Korean deputy minister of commerce, industry and energy.Lee said hundreds of the robots could be deployed along the 155-mile-long border bisecting the two Koreas as well as along the country’s coastline and at military airfields.With modifications, they could also be used to guard civilian installations such as airports, power stations and oil pipelines.Equipped with visual and infra-red detection capabilities, the sentry robot can spot moving objects up to four kilometres away during the day and half that distance at night.Via “pattern recognition,” it can distinguish between humans, cars or trees at two kilometres in daytime and one kilometre at night.Suppressive fire can be provided by a machine gun on top.The robot was developed by a group of four institutions including Samsung and Korea University over three years at a cost of some $10 million. Each robot reportedly costs 190 million won (Rs 92 lakhs approx).