The US military is designing and testing technology that could lead to science fiction robotic soldiers taking to the battlefields of future wars, yet the consequences are still unforeseen.

An example of such a robot called 'Ranger' already functions at the University of Maryland.

Barrett Dillow, an engineering graduate student of the University of Maryland who mans this machine says “Ranger was designed to be a teleoperated robot for space. The arms themselves were designed to perform all the tasks that an astronaut would. So, with a robot we can do all the things they would have done but faster, stronger, and better.”

This is precisely how robots are portrayed: helping humans do their dirty work.

But that work may have gotten even dirtier. Now robots are turned into killing machines as the Pentagon tests new and ‘exciting’ ways to engage in warfare.

P.W. Singer, the author of the best selling book “Wired for War” which hints that the Terminator could one day come to life says “Something big is going on here and the driving force for this is the fact that you can send a robot into certain combat situations and don’t have to worry about writing a letter home to its mother afterwards.”