Starting tonight, a real life "Robocop" will be patroling the streets of Dubai!

The uniformed robot was unveiled yesterday at the Gulf Information Security and Expo Conference, greeting the astonished audience.

It was created by the Dubai police in cooperation with Google and IBM's supercomputer Watson.
It's officially called a “full-size humanoid service robot” and can be piloted or move autonomously.

The robot can salute, feed video to a command center, settle files, speak 9 languages, bow, and recognize facial expressions and hand gestures from up to 1.5 meters away.

It's 1,50m tall, weighs 100kg, rolls around on wheels and has a tablet integrated in its chest where civilians can report crimes.

The robot can function for eight hours with a single charge, and the batteries can be pre-charged and then swapped within seconds.

The Dubai police doesn't plan to use the Robocop for dangerous or serious crimes, but rather for small tasks:

With an aim to assist and help people in the malls or on the streets, the robocop is the latest smart addition to the force and has been designed to help us fight crime, keep the city safe and improve happiness levels. (...) We planned for a security system for the future of the city to tackle future crimes. By 2025, Dubai will be one of the best five cities in the world on security level. By 2030, there will be no mysterious or unknown crimes in Dubai and the police will have the biggest DNA data bank in the country.

-Brigadier-General Khalid Nasser Al Razouqi, Director of the Smart Services Department for the Dubai Police

The Dubai Police wants the Robocops to make up 25% of the police employees by 2030.

And they're even planning to create world's first "smart police station" with absolutely no human employees.

Dubai has proven to be one of the most innovative and future-oriented cities with projects like the Hyperloop and drone taxis, so a robot police squad wouldn't feel out of place at all!

Robocops around the world

This robot police officer in Dubai isn't the first one of its kind.
"Griffin" is a six-wheeled robot used for bomb detection in Ohio, Congo uses robots to monitor and direct traffic, and South Korea even has robots in a prison to patrol and monitor the inmates.
The Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research (FEDOR) in Russia has supposedly created a Robocop that can shoot accurately, lift dumbbells, and walk.
And the "Anbot" in China is using facial recognition to identify criminals and follows them until police reinforcements arrive.

Ethical concerns

As with any robotic invention, there are ethical questions to consider.
The biggest concern is probably what would happen if the Robocop made a wrong decision that would then have a negative effect on somebody else.
“The problem is that you can’t make a machine responsible for its mistakes,” states Alan Winfield, professor of robot ethics at the University of West England. “How do you punish it? How do you sanction it? You can’t.”

What are your thoughts on "Robocops" and how would you manage the ethical concerns?

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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