Robocops Being Used As Traffic Police In Democratic Republic of Congo

mspohr writes "The Guardian describes robocops used in Kinshasa to direct traffic: "The solar-powered aluminum robots are huge, towering over the jammed streets of Kinshasa, as cars and motorcycles jostle for road room, their horns blasting. Each hand on the odd-looking machines — built to withstand the year-round hot climate — is fitted with green and red lights that regulate the flow of traffic in the sprawling city of nine million. The robots are also equipped with rotating chests and surveillance cameras that record the flow of traffic and send real-time images to the police station. These are second generation robots designed by a Congolese association of women engineers. Although the humanoids look more like giant toys than real policemen, motorists have given them a thumbs up. 'There are certain drivers who don't respect the traffic police. But with the robot it will be different. We should respect the robot,' taxi driver Poro Zidane told AFP."

Comments

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one respect our new robocop overlords.

Re:Obligatory

[davester666]

They'll respect robocop if robocop has the handgun from the movie to back him up. Otherwise, he's just another obstacle to knock out of the way.

Re:Obligatory

[Rei]

While the whole "robot" aspect is just style, I think the main point to respect is that they have moving low-light cameras. So the robot may not come and arrest you for a major violation, but the police might.

Anyway, while it's a bit gimmicky, I think it's just so great to see such a stereotypically 3rd world country supporting people learning engineering in that manner. DRC is the last place on earth one would expect government funding for an association of womens' engineers making robots. Maybe some day they'll even end up with some viable export products, or establish enough of an educated base to attract multinationals looking for low-cost engineering talent like India has long worked to do.

Re:Obligatory

[blackraven14250]

I think it's just so great to see such a stereotypically 3rd world country supporting people learning engineering in that manner.

On the other hand, I think it's disturbing that 3rd world engineers are making the more developed areas of DRC, like the ones with giant robotic cops, look like they're living in a futuristic dystopian police state. The concept of having a towering robotic overlord giving me instructions and watching my every move doesn't sit that well, and I'm not from bumfuck nowhere, DRC, where substantial portions of the population believe in sorcery and animism. They just added a cop lookalike shell to things we'd consider normal, like traffic lights and roadway monitoring cameras, but in the process made those concepts far more disturbing.

Re:Obligatory

[Prof.Phreak]

And the Earth Stood Still.....today.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Read TFA, it is already the job of the police there to "chase motorists who raise civic awareness":
"But Kinshasa governor Andre Kimbuta said that while the machines could regulate traffic, they were no match for real policemen who could chase motorists who jump red lights and raise civic awareness."

Re:Obligatory

[oodaloop]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

That's nothing

[codeButcher]

South Africa had similar ones for AGES. List of South African English regionalisms, Image search.

They still can't be bribed, though. New version needed, perhaps the government will issue a tender for that.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

'Robot' is used across much of Southern Africa as a general term for traffic lights - not just South Africa. This applies even when the traffic lights are in conventional form.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

This applies even when the traffic lights are in conventional form.

WARNING: Irony module not installed correctly. Type "WHOOSH" and press Enter to retry.

Re:That's nothing

[LordWabbit2]

Yeah but in South Africa they are not working - much like the majority of the population.

How are these better than traffic lights?

[righteousness]

I don't get it. What's wrong with using traffic lights?

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[IHateEverybody]

Robots are way cooler than traffic lights.

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[Kkloe]

probably so that people have the feeling that they are being watched, even if they used normal traffic lights and cameras it would not have the same impact as traffic light and cameras in a humanoid form

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[m.alessandrini]

Because if you're too undisciplined, it'll punish you with that tool you can see at its pubis height.

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[penguinoid]

Why have traffic lights when you can have a robocop which has red, yellow, and green lights? They probably went with the robocop traffic lights to save money, as they cost 1/2 to 1/8 what regular traffic lights cost.

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[rwise2112]

I don't get it. What's wrong with using traffic lights?

Dead or alive, you're stopping at this intersection!

Re:How are these better than traffic lights?

[The_Rook]

proof that robots are cooler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_QsY7govq0

i want one in new york!

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail our new Congolese robot overlords!

Let's hope it goes better than Troposhere 5

[Kid CUDA]

These robots are cool. Let's hope they work better than this Congolese rocker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I don't follow

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is the reasoning behind believing that people who don't respect actual people with authority will respect mere machines?

Re:I don't follow

[skegg]

Dare you to dis ED-209 !

Re: I don't follow

[Anonymous Coward]

You have 10 seconds to comply.

He, for one, welcomes our new robotic overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

He, for one, welcomes our new robotic overlords

“There are certain drivers who don’t respect the traffic police. But with the robot it will be different. We should respect the robot,”

Pipedot had this article a year ago

[water-and-sewer]

Was just reading where astronomers have seen a supernova event twice now due to gravitational lensing which allows the same image to take four different routes to our eyes.

This must be the same thing happening then, because I first read about the Kinshasa traffic robots on http://pipedot.org/ a full freaking year ago.

http://pipedot.org/story/2014-...

I'd like to scream "Dupe" but rather I'll scream "Missed it by a mile." WTF, Slashdot, this is like archeology these days. This news dates back to March 2014.

Re: Pipedot had this article a year ago

[whopis]

If you read the article you would have seen that it is about the new robots that they have installed. It even talks about the original two (the ones talked about in your article) and the upgrades with the new models.

Its africa

[Viol8]

Traffic lights requires a certain level of societal discipline , a willingness to follow rules and common sense. These tend to be in short supply on that continent.

Re:Its africa

[penguinoid]

Which, incidentally, has nothing whatsoever to do with the economic woes of that continent.

Re:Its africa

[Bacon Bits]

That's an extremely ignorant and ethnocentric way to put it.

The issue is that they have a completely different driving culture. In the west, traffic control devices are so old that they were originally human operated signs because there was no electricity to operate them. They are as old to us as the automobile itself, meaning that all drivers in the West started out using traffic signals in the form of signs and, later, lights. There has never been a generation of drivers who did not have foreknowledge of learn to drive on roads without traffic control devices.

In Africa, they have learned to expect a human figure to dictate flow of traffic. Building a mechanical human figure is the most obvious solution to automating it because everybody who already drives there will understand it. They won't understand some funny looking street lights. You're taking all your presumed knowledge that you were raised on from well over 100 years of development and education which you erroneously term "common sense" and start complaining that a culture which has not had 100 years of the same can't magically find the same solution. The thing is, our driving culture isn't better. It just has different priorities. Ours favors safety and obeying rules regardless of how practical or necessary, theirs favors convenience and expedience. You've never sat at a traffic light with no opposing traffic and felt just a bit silly? You don't know that one stop sign that everybody knows is a waste of time because the cross road has such little traffic and they put up a 4 way instead of a 2 way or should've been a yeild? Or the traffic light that runs all night in the middle of nowhere because some kid got hit in the middle of the night back in the 80s? You enjoy paying thousands of dollars annually to cover the cost of insurance even though you've never been involved in an accident? You can justify all these things because your culture has already given you the reasons why they exist and you accept them because your culture tells you they're acceptable. You don't know why other cultures do what they do. That's why they look alien, backwards, and silly. That doesn't mean they're wrong.

Re:Its africa

[Viol8]

"In Africa, they have learned to expect a human figure to dictate flow of traffic"

Oh please. They're not bloody children. We had cops before traffic lights in the west but we sussed them out.

"They won't understand some funny looking street lights"

Now who's being ignorant. They understand perfectly - they just don't give a shit.

Re:Its africa

[BevanFindlay]

And, as is often the case with online debates, both you and the person you are refuting are only partly right (I would argue that the GP, while not very politically-correct, is probably more right). I lived in (East) Africa for almost a year, and have had an interest in learning about cultural differences. Effectively, what this boils down to is whether the culture in question has respect for the rule of law, and in general, a lot of Africa doesn't. You could argue quite effectively that a lack of "respect for the rule of law" is just a "different" culture and not "wrong", but... look at the effects. Western culture developed certain "structures" over the long time periods it took us to develop technologically (a lot of it starting with the Renaissance and, interestingly, the Protestant Reformation). What we see now though are a lot of other cultures which never developed the supporting cultural constructs that make the Western systems work suddenly having access to the end products. Ideas like the importance of honest business dealings just don't exist - you say what you think the other person wants to hear (and considering most of our market system is based on capitalism, I'm sure you can see some of the problems that arise).

Is a culture that says you obey the traffic signals, even when not immediately beneficial to yourself, because it maintains order "better" than one that goes ahead and tries to maximise individual gain, ignoring the rules? It's very hard to argue against the former being objectively better - and certainly not when given the context of tools and systems developed with the former culture as an assumed base. To use an overly-simplistic example, it's like giving matches to children without first teaching them fire safety - if you want the tool, learn the rules, otherwise someone is going to get hurt.

Is it cultural imperialism to expect that cultures in other places should take on our value set? I don't know, but if they want to participate in the benefits of our systems, I don't think it is. The other option of course would be for a culture to develop their own set of systems, rules, and culture around how they want to operate - but that would also mean the tools and systems would look different. (And it won't necessarily be compatible internationally). Maybe though, that's exactly what we are seeing here - something that would get laughed at in the West actually being effective in Africa because of the different perceptions of abstract rules vs a person.

Also, one very slight correction to your final statement: it should read "That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong." It doesn't mean they're right, either. It's political correctness insanity to say that we should respect a culture on points where it is actually destructive (and I would argue that "respect for the rule of law" is one of these).

You are however correct in saying that most of us don't know why a culture does what it does. Having read a bit about the subject, some of the fundamental assumptions can be so different that we almost cannot understand them (or how those assumptions shape their view on the world), even when they're explained.

Third world traffic rules

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They have rules, but mostly no one follows them. All traffic proceeds by no holds barred negotiation. "OK I move one feet forward, now your move". The only use for traffic rules is to set help negotiating the bribe with the traffic cop. "Come on, officer, 500 rupees for riding without a helmet? The actual fine itself is just 750 rupees. Come on, what kind of idiot you think I am to settle for a 33% discount. Take this 100 rupees". "What? 100 rupees, even beggars don't take 100 rupees anymore, how about not coming to full stop at halt-and-go sign, 1500 rupees fine, discounted to 200 rupees and we call it fair and square?". "OK, next time start with something reasonable we could have finished the transaction much sooner and saved time".

Re:Third world traffic rules

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent some time travelling for work to Mexico City and after about 5min in traffic I was amazed that there aren't more accidents. I wasn't surprised when a few days later the car I was in was involved in a minor accident. I'm definitely glad that we were using a van service and not renting our own cars.

I also wasn't sure which I saw more of - dogs walking around with missing appendages, or original-style VW Beetles. And every 5th car seemed to be one of the latter.

Robot-shaped traffic lights

[Geoffrey.landis]

I don't get it. What's wrong with using traffic lights?

These are traffic lights. Traffic lights with cameras attached.

They're just traffic lights in the shape of robots. Which is pretty cool, when you look at the pictures.

Where's Roland when you need him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner

robot = traffic light

[Anonymous Coward]

Lot of Africans call tragic light 'robot' I think they just going to install traffic lights with cameras.

They call traffic lights "robots"

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc

Enforcement

[Mike Van Pelt]

CitizenYouAreIllegallyParkedYouHaveThirtySecondsToMoveYourCar