Robots, guns, backwoods inventors.

Very cool article in the New Yorker (though I can't recommend much of their cringingly spiteful recent writing). Unfortunately you need a subscription.

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY about gunsmith Jerry Baber and the remote-controlled armed machines he has created in partnership with two robotics companies. Jerry Baber, an engineer by training, is an expert in investment casting. He lives in Piney Flats, Tennessee where he operates a small foundry which manufactures gun parts. A few years ago Baber started producing, from start to finish, his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12, which has the power of a twelve-gauge shotgun but none of its bruising recoil. Baber spent a dozen years and upward of a million and a half dollars of his own money perfecting the gun. Not long ago, he decided that his gun was so reliable and accurate that it could be mounted on unmanned vehicles. Armed, remote-controlled robots, Baber believes, could offer crucial assistance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, he met with engineers at Robotex and at Neural Robotics. Together, they created prototypes of small, remote-controlled armed machines. Describes three of the machines, a five-foot-long white helicopter Baber calls Junior, and two ground robots. The AA-12, unlike most military weapons, can shoot a variety of ammunition, including non-lethal pellets and mini-grenades. Writer observes a demonstration of Baber’s robots. Discusses the military’s use of some remote-controlled weaponry, such as Predator drones. The Pentagon has approached the subject of armed robots with considerable wariness. Tells about a 2006 incident in which a fried wire caused a demonstration robot to malfunction. Baber, for his part, seems baffled by the military’s worries about deploying armed robots. Writer observes Baber making gun parts in his foundry. Baber grew up an only child in Covington, Virginia. He enlisted in the Army and then obtained a degree in engineering from Virginia Tech. During the Vietnam War, he and a partner found a lucrative niche making bomb springs. Tells how his friend Max Atchisson first presented him with the plans for an automatic shotgun that could harness recoil, called the Atchisson Automatic Shotgun. After some two hundred modifications to Atchisson’s original design, Baber finally built a working gun, christened the Auto Assault-12. After failing to sell the gun to the military, Baber decided that there was only one way to convince the government of the gun’s usefulness: robots. Describes his work with Neural Robotics and Robotex to produce working prototypes of robots armed with AA-12s. Mentions interest from foreign governments. Two of Baber’s guns are being tested by Pentagon R & D centers on their own unmanned vehicles.