Bio-Inspired Robots Will Officially Serve In South Korean Army In 2024

South Korean soldiers will soon get special power support from military robots in the future. These machines will be taken inspiration from various real-life prototypes including snakes, insects, and birds.

Defense Acquisition Programme Administration (DAPA for short) is the agency responsible for purchasing Korean military weapons. The agency introduced a document on May 12 pointing out its plans to bring biomimetic equipment into military operations by 2024. This means robots will play a very important role in this country's military and defense organization in the near future.

In an interview with Yonhap News Agency, Park Jeong-Eun, a DAPA spokesman, said:

Designing robots inspired by the natural environment is not a new idea.

Instead of scratching their heads about new designs for robots, scientists can learn directly from how the creatures on Earth evolved to adapt to the environment. As such, they can use modern materials to simulate this progress of natural evolution, as well as design bots based on real-world conditions.

DAPA has a plan for developing robots based on prototypes of insects and humans in the next 5 years. Next, they will design biobots with the characteristics of snakes, birds and marine creatures.

According to a Telegraph report, the South Korean army will bring the swimming and flying bots into reconnaissance missions. Meanwhile, biobots designed based on snakes will help it creep into restricted areas more easily.

There is still a lot of controversy in the use of robots and autonomous technology in the military. Until now, reports relating to South Korea's plans have not ever mentioned the relationship between robots and weapons in this force.

However, these bots may be a good option to tackle the consequences caused by draft policies and protect soldiers from dangerous situations.

Many people believe that the strong development of modern technologies has temporarily kept our balance on a slippery slope. While bots are getting more and more popular into the military field, humans may get closer to the moment when killer robots can decide on their own when they should leverage deadly force in a fight.