The Brief Rise and Long Fall of Russia's Robot Tank 79
malachiorion writes with this report from Popular Science"Seventy-four years ago, Russia accomplished what no country had before, or has since: it sent armed ground robots into battle. These remote-controlled Teletanks took the field during one of WWII's earliest and most obscure clashes, as Soviet forces pushed into Eastern Finland for roughly three and a half months, from 1939 to 1940. The workings of those Teletanks were cool, though they were useless against Germany, and Russia proceeded to fall behind the developed world in military robotics."
Runner up? (Score:4, Interesting)
Goliath: The Nazi Remote-Controlled Bomb [historyjunkies.com]
Re:Perhaps the first but... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is enough bandwidth, our control systems are still a bit off though. We use laser communications in some situations and radio in others but tanks have since the 90's been able to communicate and coordinate their weapons systems for a while now. This makes them more effective in picking targets so 4 out of 5 tanks aren't shooting the same target and invalid targets can be eliminated before a shot is fired.
The biggest problem is the automation of the drive units. We can't seem to get a real time terrain picture in a way that the tanks can auto pilot around on or relay to an operator. This is an enormous task compared to flying a drone that doesn't have to deal with obstacles in or on the ground that can change in a matter of seconds in a combat situation.
Of course that is changing a bit with work done by DARPA and their autonomous challenges but as of now, it makes them a sitting duck to often trying to negotiate terrain. But the weapons systems have had the bandwidth for a while now and can pretty much pick the target, aim and fire while moving at great speeds with little assistance from a human. It's quite amazing really.