There's going to be a new enforcer in the Gaza Strip soon, and it'll be a robot. The robot is called the Guardium, and the Israeli military was showing it off to the press on Monday.

Since the beginning of the Iraq war, the use of unmanned robots in combat has sky-rocketed. Particularly popular with the American military forces is using flying, unmanned drones. But remote controlled, land-based robots (such as the SWORDS bot) have also been showing their worth recently. With basic robots becoming increasingly easy to construct, companies are popping up all over the place with the latest and greatest ideas in killing people, watching people, and helping people. It has been a long time in coming (longer than many people anticipated), but with the combination of cheap computational power, cheap electronics, and advancement in robotic control software, the age of the combat drone is just beginning to pick up a bit of steam.

The Guardium will probably be used to patrol areas and guard things, such as borders. It has night vision, long battery life, the ability to carry 660 pounds, can travel at 80 km/h, has machine guns, a couple of cameras, and can navigate via GPS. The robot's operator controls the robot by using something that has a similar appearance to a video game controller. The operation console has a video that is being transmitted by the Guardium drone, and has pedals for movement, a steering wheel, and a sorta-Playstation controller like thing to target targets with, and to control the bot's cameras. ''Any kid who grew up with a PlayStation will be able to come in here and learn this in seconds,'' said a guy name Peled, who is a general manager for the business that built the robot.

The robot costs about $600,000 USD. With other options, such as improved control and weapon systems, the price-tag can raise to a couple of million bucks (depending on the equipment loadout.)

The Israelis are only starting with a small amount of these robots, and so far have not disclosed their operational plans for the bots.

Here is a promo video for the Guardium robot. This video has a fairly innocuous look to it (almost a campy feel), but yes, this is the real deal.