This Robot Collects Fingerprints

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @06:53AM from the maybe-autographs-too dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "When police officers found suspicious packages today in an airport or a train station, they destroyed them immediately, along with potential fingerprints on them. A new robotic device, dubbed RAFFE (short for "Robot Accessory for Fuming Fingerprint Evidence), developed by scientists from the University of Toronto (U of T) and the University of Calgary, offers a solution to this problem. Mounted on an ordinary robot, it will reveal fingerprints by releasing Super Glue on the object. Then it will take pictures of these fingerprints. The Calgary Police Service is already using RAFFE for field tests. This overview contains more details and extra references."

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Think by dolo666 · 2004-04-21 08:45 · Score: 1, Troll

Don't be a photard, dude, and think for a second about what you're saying before looking stupid. What if we had one of these robots sniff a bomb from the mid-90s, and this fingerprint evidence cracked open a terrorist cell in the USA? And just what if it was the terrorist cell that spearheaded 9/11? Thousands of families would be safe and the two towers would be standing today, and all because of a few geeks from Toronto and Calgary.

Even the smallest things like finger prints can prevent thousands of deaths.