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.'"

Comments

This sounds familiar...

[rwyoder]

"Please put down your weapon! You have 20 seconds to comply!"

Re:This sounds familiar...

[khasim]

Damn! You beat me to it. Anyway, from TFA:

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."

The key problem with that is that the subjects the robot is studying will know that they are being studied and will be able to alter their behaviour to change what the robot "learns".

£7.4 million?

[Joining Yet Again]

Nick Hawes sounds like just another tired academic jumping on the bandwagon of grant money for security applications.

Shame on him.

Only if you can pay less Insurance

[tuppe666]

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

NYPD BlueBot

[Jessified]

"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!

Re:Overlords

[narcc]

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.

Re:hm....

[rwyoder]

gimme a roomba, a broom stick and a pivoting webcam.

Pervert.

We already have seven of these advanced models...

[pubwvj]

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.

Re:"abnormalities in human behavior"?

[djupedal]

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...

Who Will Protect the Robo-cops?

[cookYourDog]

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.

Re:What are abnormalities?

[Jmc23]

I have the unfortunate predilection of acting the same towards everybody and being extremely idealistic. Growing up english in quebec there were always situations like this. Granted, I wouldn't call my behaviour tough, just naive and autistic. However, I never backed down and things always worked out in the end.

I'm not sure if MX is supposed to stand for mexico, but when I was living there, no matter the attitude of the person, if I treated them like any other human (and I do that because I see them as any other human) they were unable to do anything but treat me the same. It's amazing how treating others the same as you would treat yourself can even get police that were looking for bribes to let you go free. Once, an enraged crack addict in withdrawal broke his hand against a concrete wall because he couldn't bring himself to harm me because of the way I had treated him.

Change the way you see them in your head and you might find that they change the way they act towards you.