Samsung has developed a robotic sentry gun for South Korea.

The weapons-grade robot can detect, raise the alarm, and provide suppressive fire, said Lee Jae-Hoon, deputy minister of commerce, industry, and energy. “The Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot has surveillance, tracking, firing, and voice recognition systems built into a single unit,” he added.

While the South Korean government has made no decision yet as to whether to deploy these machines along the DMZ to North Korea, they are clearly considering it in the face of decreased numbers of conscripts. The robot is equipped with visual and infrared sensors and can spot moving objects up to 4 km away; the software is able to distinguish between humans, cars, or other moving objects up to 2 km in daylight or one kilometer at night.

The robot was developed by Samsung Techwin Co. in cooperation with the Korea University. The project took three years and cost $10 million. The price per unit is expected to be $200,000. The developers expect to sell at least 1000 units.

The video of these machines is quite impressive.