Wired reports there are over 2,000 robots fighting in Afghanistan with real people forces – that’s 1 robot for every 50 U.S. troops in the country. The robots are used to clear routes – make sure that if bombs go off, they kill the robots, not the people. They inspect vehicles and do lots of other classified things.

From Wired:

For all the growing popularity and utility of America’s robot soldiers, they’re still way too dumb to do much of anything on their own. Demonstrations of groundbot technology “have abounded,” Dr. Scott Fish, the Army’s chief scientist…. But military researchers still “don’t know when it is we can deliver … serious autonomy.”