Robot law enforcement set for UK streets

We’ve been treated to a glimpse into the future of robotics from AI Professor Noel Sharkey from Sheffield University, after two months of research looking at trends and the evolution of robotics around the world the botboffin offers some bleak reading for criminals.

At the core of his predictions are the vast amounts of data that robots can potentially store on-board and their ability to access databases containing all manner of information to almost instantly identify people.

In addition, street based robots would be armed with several sensors to detect weapons, sniff out explosives and with their super-human strength make arrests with comparative ease.

Within 30 years streets could see robots sat in strategic locations, monitoring crowds and using audio/visual systems be able to pick out drunks, fights and other anti-social behaviour and in the event of larger scale crowd problems fire RFID darts into the trouble makers and track them down later.

We’ll have to wait 60 years though, according to the Warner Brothers commissioned report, for traffic wardens to disappear off the streets and robotic ticketing systems to take over.

At around the same time the technology for autonomous police cars should be available too, bringing joyriders jaunts to a speedy end and with immediate numberplate recognition decide to stop cars to make arrests for a variety of misdemeanours, adding points to your licence and deducting fines from your bank in an instant!

The 80 year view is one of robots made from inorganic materials and have human face expressions, patrolling the now not so mean streets and, armed with biometric tools, take DNA tests and use respiration, heart rate and temperature in a kind of lie-detector fashion and conduct immediate drink and drug testing.

Professor Sharkey comments: “Hollywood movies and TV shows such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles have been dismissed as fantastical over the years, but this report, based on existing research and current technoligcal developments, suggests that robots will play a much bigger role in society over the next 75 years than previously anticipated.”

“These robot developments could be extremely beneficial in the protection of citizens and police in the hands of benevolent governments. But in the wrong hands, as warned in the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, robot law enforcement could be a major blow to individual privacy and basic human rights.”

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles out now on DVD

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