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Will Robots Replace Rent-a-Cops?
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Now, an EU-funded, £7.2 million ($11 million USD) collaborative project, called Strands, is underway in England to develop 4D, artificial intelligence for security and care applications. It aims to produce intelligent robo-sentinels that can patrol areas, and learn to detect abnormalities in human behavior. Could their project eventually replace security guards with robots? It looks possible. Strands, as Nick Hawes of the University of Birmingham said, will 'develop novel approaches to extract spatio-temporal structure from sensor data gathered during months of autonomous operation,' to develop intelligence that can then 'exploit [those] structures to yield adaptive behavior in highly demanding, real-world security and care scenarios.'"
"Please put down your weapon! You have 20 seconds to comply!"
If you're going for automation - why not just fixed cameras and other sensors covering the whole area?
Nick Hawes sounds like just another tired academic jumping on the bandwagon of grant money for security applications.
Shame on him.
The reality of a security guard is your main job is...to lower insurance costs. The reasons if you need to be a serious criminal to want to go through a human, these robots don't have deterrent...but I suspect nothing like the costs. The fact is accountants will decide this one.
In case your confused about what a security guard really does this is a clip from mike leighs Naked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N90sl94g7PE
A pedestrian crossing the street outside the marked cross walk at Abner Ave. was killed today when a Patrolling Robot experienced a malfunction while writing a traffic citation at the scene. Authorities aren't clear yet on what happened but when paramedics arrived at the scene they found the robot's probe impaled in the suspects anus and a blank blue screen indicating an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL exception.
gimme a roomba, a broom stick and a pivoting webcam.
For the rent-a-cop, abnormalities are: black, brown, poor, disabled or disordered, etc., ... unprepared, or even intelligent. Being intelligent is just too suspicious. Can the robot do all that?
Everytime I visit the grocery store nearby, it's like a game of pacman. They have about six security guards per isle and they follow me around like dim-witted ghosts. I have to hurriedly snatch up my bread, coffee, and milk to make it safely to checkout.
"It aims to produce intelligent robo-sentinels that can patrol areas, and learn to detect abnormalities in human behavior."
Forget "abnormalities," if they just programmed the robots to detect and harass black people, you could replace the entire NYPD!
Or you could just push them over, slowly walk up a set of stairs, toss a towel over them, or any of a zillion simple ways to significantly disable them that even the fattest mall-cop would easily overcome.
Required reading for internet skeptics
We already have seven of these. They're called D.O.Gs. Work great. Highly intelligent and programmable. Self directed. Loyal. Obedient. Self-replicating. Able to power themselves off of local rodents and farm wastes (meat & bones). They're also good at herding livestock.
Can these robots use tasers or shoot people with firearms? Many "rent a cops" are off-duty police officers earning a little beer money.
I'd rather trust an armed robot over a rent-a-cop any day. Last time one shot at me, the real cops that showed up hauled him off and lamented I didn't use the firearm we all agreed wasn't under the seat of my car...
Robots do not eat donuts.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Good luck patrolling the streets with machines composed of rare earth metals, proprietary design, and expensive hardware. Unless these things can protect themselves (hint: no), expect them to be walking (or rolling) targets for salvage.
This is really where we need to balance our drive for automation with the need for human intuition and thinking.
I will bet that it will be easy at first to hack these robots.
I'm weary about more and more machines taking the place of humans in the workforce.
Actually, what I'm really weary about is that it's great to have new technologies which can replace human labor, but there should also be something to offset where the human labor gets a chance to learn new skills to get other types of employment.
After all, a person who can't get a fair chance at work, well, that's simply wrong, as it remove this person some dignity.
Society needs to balance all of this, so that everybody has a chance to contribute to something and get monetary rewards.
It's simple economics.
This is where for once, our government should step in and balance things out, for the good of the people, who are also taxpayers. Promote the work, promote human labor and promote the moving of currency so that everybody has a chance to live.
If I recall correctly there are some military bases in the western United States that have had ARMED robot sentries for the better part of a decade. I suppose these are not exactly the smartest robots ever, little more than unmanned ATVs with sensor packages driving preprogrammed routes looking for movement/heat sources. If they find one they target their gun and wait for orders from a manned security post. While I don't have a real problem with security drones arming them with anything (lethal or non) is a bad idea, many authority figures already have god complex, I can only imagine it getting worse if they have the power of life, death & excruciating pain at the behest of their keyboard.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/02/army-gets-more/
include having dark skin...
Couple people get 10 years for malicious mischief and felony destruction of state property, and those cameras stay untouched.
Then explain to me how destroying cameras in the UK has become a new form of recreation? They've got destruction of government cameras down to a science.
With suspended cameras they hang an old tire from it, fill the bottom with gasoline, and put a match to it. The flames will crack lenses, boil away electronics, and make a general mess of things. Cameras closer to the ground are generally treated to baseball bats and pry bars. Ones out of reach from ladders or bats, or a potential for bodily harm from burning, get pelted with paintballs.
Given a large enough population, and enough cameras, and you will reach the statistical certainty that cameras will be destroyed by someone that doesn't give a shit. Unless the people responsible meet swift and sure punishment word will spread that it's open season on cameras. Which is precisely what happened in the UK.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Which is precisely what happened in the UK.
This story just isn't true. There was a rash of speed camera vandalisms here a few years ago, which has dissipated. They still get vandalised (of course, like everything) but not in any widespread systematic way. Driving around it's rare to see vandalised cameras.
I tried to find some figures for what proportion of speed cameras were destroyed at the height of the vandalism - I couldn't find anything exact, but there were a few news stories giving figures of 700 cameras destroyed in 2007 (which apparently was the worst year for it), out of 5,500 total cameras. That's quite a lot of destroyed cameras, but nothing like the picture you are painting and it hasn't lead to the cameras being removed or a majority being destroyed.