Over at the Department of Defense, they’ve got lots of robots. Most of them aren’t scary and glamorous like the lethal Drones you read about all the time. Perhaps the most useful land-based bot is the Tanglefoot, a short, roving critter that sneaks up on Improvised Explosive Devices, then graciously allows itself to be blown up for its trouble. Then there’s the Autonomous Platform Demonstrator (APD) a nimble, 9.3-ton, unmanned ground vehicle that can turn on a dime and accelerate to a top speed of 50mph.

But the next step for the Pentagon is getting these machines to autonomously talk to each other. And so the DoD is working on a Collaborative Unmanned Systems Technology Demonstrator (CUSTD) system, which was discussed at the latest Robotics Rodeo, held at Fort Benning, Georgia. The U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) hosted the event.

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A step closer to Skynet? Pentagon wants fighting robots to talk to each other