First, the so-called "armed robot" weapons that the U.S. is currently developing -- those seen in the PBS NewsHour piece -- are far from being robots. They are simply small radio-controlled caterpillar tractors carrying video cameras and light machine guns (or small grenade launchers). The U.S. has neither a monopoly nor a lead in this quite ancient technology: the Germans had built small remote control tanks with TV cameras on board by 1943 (in the event, they had no effect on the war). So it can hardly be said that we're unleashing a new technology on the world.
Furthermore, any country that can produce radio-controlled toys and video cameras can develop the same thing. Thus, whether we continue or cancel these remote controlled gadgets in no way determines whether other countries might be foolish enough to try to field such weapons.
Second, these radio-controlled tractor weapons are almost certainly useless in combat. They are much easier to detect than a human soldier because they are much noisier and can't maneuver as unobtrusively (due to TV camera limitations) as an infantryman. They are much slower and much less effective in finding hidden enemies than the human eye.
Those same hidden enemies they detect so poorly can stop our remote controlled weapons with a single machine gun burst. The radio link used to control them is subject to interruption by friendly forces' electronic interference and even more vulnerable to deliberate jamming by the enemy -- and when control is lost, the weapon is potentially dangerous to friendly troops. In other words, these remote-controlled weapons are essentially useless for reconnaissance patrols, assaults relying on surprise, perimeter security and most other basic infantry combat tasks. To underline how serious these weaknesses are in a real combat zone, the dozen or so machinegun-armed prototypes sent to Iraq for troop trials have been there for 18 months without firing a shot.
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