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The Department of Defense has put out a call: design a pack of robots. A so-called Multi-Robot Pursuit System would be used to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject." Each robot has to weigh 100 kilograms or less, act autonomously (with a human squad leader), negotiate obstacles, and provide immediate feedback. The robots would report back to a human operator, and defer to that human when the robot AI determines that a "difficult decision" is required. The first phase of development is to create the sensors for detecting humans and to conduct feasibility experiments. Then comes the building of a prototype with fully functional sensors. At that point, a third phase would try to establish whether a pack of such robots -- about three to five in number -- could realistically be used for missions involving, according to the proposal, "search and rescue, fire-fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical, and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."