High-level robot skills represent an increasingly popular paradigm in robot programming. However, configuring the skills' parameters for a specific task remains a manual and time-consuming endeavor. Existing approaches for learning or optimizing these parameters often require numerous real-world executions or do not work in dynamic environments. To address these challenges, we propose MuTT, a novel encoder-decoder transformer architecture designed to predict environment-aware executions of robot skills by integrating vision, trajectory, and robot skill parameters. Notably, we pioneer the fusion of vision and trajectory, introducing a novel trajectory projection. Furthermore, we illustrate MuTT's efficacy as a predictor when combined with a model-based robot skill optimizer. This approach facilitates the optimization of robot skill parameters for the current environment, without the need for real-world executions during optimization. Designed for compatibility with any representation of robot skills, MuTT demonstrates its versatility across three comprehensive experiments, showcasing superior performance across two different skill representations.

Included in the new technology are machine-gun toting robots that charge up the beaches as advance assault, as well as speedboats that instantly transformed into small stealthy submarines diving beneath the surface to avoid detection. For the past two weeks, the Navy and Marine Corps have been quietly testing about 50 new fascinating technologies out at Camp Pendleton, at the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise 2017, in California. The exercise is investigating how the military can leverage the latest technological advances for ship-to-the-shore, or the space between the Naval ship and the beach where they could potentially land. Sailors and Marines have been experimenting with the technology and evaluating the wide range of sea, air and land innovations in a variety of realistic scenarios. The tech includes amphibious vehicles, but also drones like quadcopters and potentially weapon-wielding ground robots.

Self-driving cars are grabbing headlines lately, and the military is also making inroads with similar tech-- but these vehicles are mounted with weapons like machine guns. General Dynamics created MUTT, aka Multi-Utility Tactical Transport, to help dismounted small units. This is a smart robot designed to help lighten the load for Marines and other warfighters. MUTT looks like a futuristic spin on the sort of quad you might have fun driving around your farm. Rectangular shaped, it is 5 feet long and 4.5 feet wide and weighs 750 pounds.

The robot is named MUTT, and it has a human-controlled gun on its back. Soldier are preparing for war with robots. Soldiers are preparing for war, alongside robots. As part of the Pacific Manned-Unmanned Initiative, soldiers with the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division tested prototypes of robots, to see if they might be useful in future battles. Those robots included everything from the basic, like flying quadcopter drone scouts... They're called Multipurpose Unmanned Tactical Transports, or MUTTs, and while they aren't exactly robots that fire their own guns, with a soldier on the back they turn deadly pretty quick.