Is it possible to make a riot control robot that doesn’t look ominous? One could try making it look like, say, a mailbox or a fire hydrant, and there would be people saying, “Oh noes, there could be one sitting right next to you and you’d never know!” One could try making it look like a cuddly cartoon character, and there would be people saying, “Oh noes, it’s just like that episode/movie where all the cuddly cartoon characters turned evil!”
Perhaps the best strategy is to make it look like some fragile, inelegant hunk of scrap metal liable to disintegrate if handled poorly (which might not be so far off the mark, this being first-generation technology). Maybe get Frank Gehry to do the design for that extra bit of cachet.
For a short while, it’ll be good fun trapping and destroying robots like this–I’m looking forward to F250’ing one of these AnBots, myself–and then the robots will figure us out and game over. But so much fun to start with!
It’s the fact that it’s a riot control robot that makes it ominous. It could look like Mickey Mouse and if its purpose was “riot control” it would be scary as hell. (Actually a human-sized robot Mickey Mouse would be pretty ominous regardless of its purpose come to think of it).
However - I’m not sure it’s really as ominous as it sounds. Popular Science has a bit more about the little guy:
Notably while it has some kind of electroshock device to be used for crowd control, it’s operated by a human user via remote control and NOT by the robot itself. In that respect the robot is a lot like a drone - the human cop can deploy its weapons but the Chinese police don’t trust a self-aware automaton with the weapons just yet.
The rest of its capabilities make it sound like a movable police kiosk. It can wander around and respond to people calling for help and there’s an SOS button that people can hit if they need to talk to a human being. Also it has surveillance capabilities - likely what it sees and hears are going into some data mining applications. So it sounds to me like they’ve built a robot that can serve two purposes - during times of calm it can walk a beat and provide surveillance data to a massive database somewhere, and during riots/protests it can be deployed as a remote-controlled drone to taze rioters/protesters. I’m not sure how widespread something like that might be used.
Eh - I don’t think its any more ominous than guys dressed like Judge Dredd beating protesters over the head with riot clubs. As to the surveillance stuff - at least its obviously there. It’s not like someone silently slurping up all of your e-mails to datamine or a tap on your phone. A small refrigerator on wheels roaming the streets collecting data seems almost like a joke in comparison.
It looks like the device’s name is “peace robot,” using the same character for peace 安 (an - with a secondary meaning of security), that is found in the place name Tiananmen (天安门) Square.
Which in turn means “gate of heavenly peace,” yes, I assumed the same.
Also, “low-cost autonomous navigation and intelligent video analysis” - if they had that, they’d be licensing it out for hundreds of billions of dollars a year (minimum) to every car, plane, drone, toy, robot, and consumer electronics company on the planet.
Also conspicuously absent from the report is any mention of a feature that may prove useful to Chinese terrorists or rioters striving to outwit an indignant AnBot — its inability to climb stairs.
Riot control robots don’t need to climb stairs. A riot whose participants have all gone upstairs is no longer a riot; its job is done.
