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[Ingo Monk]

Here we have the tractor based drone with a LMG turret:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/08/next-gen-killbots-boast-enhanced-friendly-fire-avoidance/

And here we have a microdrone set up with optical sensors:
http://www.therawfeed.com/2007/10/are-insect-robots-spying-on-protesters.html

So how far out until Riggers start appearing?

[ROOTless]

Depends on definition.

Clearly Remorely controlled drones are of today, not the future.

Similarly, I see no practical problems in designing a 'robot brain' (though there's a risk of programming failure etc.), so semi-autonomous drones aren't implausible.

If you mean people with a Vehicle Control Rig implanted, it's going to be a while yet. Implant Technology is still in it's infancy.
While recieving a signal is't off the scale, feed back still is, to the best of my knowledge.

[Gabriel]

Well, you can see primative waldoes in all kinds of applications at the moment. They exist in surgeries where doctors use them for micro tools. They exist in a lot of college-level engineering programs, and I am betting they will start to exist in a lot more ways for things like manufacturing and remote-arm operations like bomb desposal robots. As far as implantation goes, I know of at least one successful experiment where a woman was implanted with a chip in the brain that let her control a robotic arm from across the room. I even posted in on here a couple of years ago. So my guess is that VCR technology will follow that kind of curve, implated chips interfacing with various systems as opposed to datajack-style interface. The original experiment was so easy on the woman because she was controlling a human analogue device: an arm. If you need someone to control a throttle a weapon system, then you are going to have to get a bit creative with the programming. But SR-style descriptions (especially in 1st edition) of riggers having sore legs after a strenuos drive, or bruises and bloody noses after a fire-fight seem to be fairly acurate.

Gabriel

[Ouija]

Well I was unsuccessful in my quick search for pictures to back my statement, but I do know for a fact the government has several remote operation vehicles at their disposal.  So I don't think it is too far off in the future, I've had the privilege of seeing a MCC (Mobil Command Center) which had two pilots controlling six different "drones".  The amount of equipment and power needed to support those was incredible, so where I do think it's possible, I don't anticipate it happening in our lifetimes.

Interesting side note: They have this pretty cool plane with two or three cameras on it.  It's also able to equipment a small missile on the bottom of it.  The range is somewhere around 150-200 miles I think.  Perhaps that's a little much even.  They ARE very closed mouth about what exactly they are capable of doing, after all they are the government!

[Zone]

All you have to do is check the toy stores: http://www.robotsrule.com/html/roboquad.php

[ROOTless]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww