iRobot PackBot to be upgraded with "Cruise Control" Next Year

iRobot Government and Industrial Robotics Division President Joe Dyer told Defense News that iRobot plans to create semi-autonomous PackBots next year. He calls it "Cruise Control," and it sounds like a winner.

The key section:

Back on the ground, the limitations of line-of-sight communications still hinder UGVs, although this appears to be changing as the hardware matures. Joe Dyer, the retired Navy vice admiral who heads iRobot’s government systems unit, said wireless technology — similar to that used in the civil computer and cell phone markets — stands to extend this range to 1,000 meters and beyond.
“The key is developing autonomy, and we expect to introduce a form of cruise control next year,” Dyer said. “Bandwidth is still an issue with the current 802.11 network systems, but we’re tackling it with [data] compression, eliminating the need for the operator to control the robot every second. If the robot flips over, it will know how to right itself automatically. Also, if the communications link is lost, the robot will know to return to a point where it can re-establish communications.”
During a recent AAEF trial, an iRobot PackBot was equipped with RedOwl, one of the first applications of an acoustic sniper-detection system to an unmanned platform. These tests also revealed RedOwl to work in more traditional forms of reconnaissance that had been the sole province of soldiers. According to Dyer, the sensor could “hear leaves rustling and sticks breaking in the night.”
Plans are to link, and in some cases combine, unmanned air and ground platforms. iRobot has experimented with mounting a PackBot on a parafoil and flying the package as a UAV, and with using an aircraft to communicate with it. Armed robots seem inevitable, but this must be handled “very carefully and professionally,” Dyer said.
“We still have to have a man in the loop,” he said. “The first armed robots will be very similar to a Predator [UAV], evolving from reconnaissance to strike, with the strike carefully managed,” he said.

PackBot paratroopers, anyone? (A video of this, called "Griffon," can be found on iRobot engineer Brian Yamauchi's web page. I think they have to get a few kinks out.