
China demonstrates new anti-riot robot - twoshedsmcginty
https://thestack.com/world/2016/04/26/china-anbot-robocop-police/
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mmagin
Gotta love folks who say "anti-terrorism" and "anti-riot" in the same
sentence.

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cryoshon
US govt takes that line. Remember to take care.

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tiananmen8964
It is against humanity machine, 27 year ago in 6/4/1989, they use Tank to kill
people in TianAnMen square, now robot replace Tank!

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president
Seems like they copied K5?
[http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/08/09/robots-
deploye...](http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/08/09/robots-deployed-to-
protect-and-serve)

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gozur88
What's Chinese for "ED-209"?

I can't get very excited about this. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of
human thugs in the world, and people are far more dangerous than machines. The
lack of robots didn't prevent all those deaths in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

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outworlder
I understand that this is a solution. What I don't understand is, what problem
is being solved here?

There are additional problems:

\- By being an untethered "telepresence" robot, it is vulnerable to jamming.
And that's if people do not find any vulnerabilities.

\- The actual "police officers" will be far removed from the situation at
hand. This creates a high incentive for abuse.

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imjustsaying
Last year while waiting at a bus stop in Hangzhou in front of an intra-
immigration office, I saw a Chinese police officer (shove, kick, or throw (it
was a year ago)) a protester from behind. She was part of a crowd of other
protesters. It looked like the protester bumped into him seconds before, while
being herded away from the office by the police.

The woman was already in front of him and walking away, but the officer's
facial expression made it clear he was very agitated. It seemed like he just
wanted to 'get back' at her for bumping into him beforehand. His impact made
her lose her balance and she nearly fell to the ground.

Maybe having someone physically and emotionally detached from a physical
setting could have positive benefits in some situations. I am still not sure
whether the remote controlled cop is a good thing though.

As an aside, the broken internet in China is crippling entire generations of
people into ignorant irrelevance. I don't think enough people appreciate the
magnanimous ramifications of making an entire country deliberately ignorant.

It's not just Google and Facebook that are blocked, it's Chinese Wikipedia,
Wordpress, and the free press in general. You need a license to publish
anything. Corruption and blatant scandals can't get published without approval
from the Party. All the state-owned enterprises, including the public
universities, are run by the Party. The Party will not often allow anything to
be published that exposes anything related to itself or its co-conspirators.

All foreign-hosted websites have soft blocks, where they will randomly not
load, with no explanation given, subconsciously driving people to only use
domestic websites that always work.

People have no way of protesting any of this without getting destroyed by the
state, professionally or literally. Unless of course, they apply and
successfully get permission from the state to do so.

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kbart
It looks more like a toy than a real deal. Just by watching a minute of video
I've already found a dozen of ways to disable it, many more mentioned in other
comments. In a current state, it's just a walking CCTV.

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InclinedPlane
A couple months ago I quipped about some sort of equivalent to "Poe's law"
except in regards to fictional dystopias and reality. I wish that wasn't a
thing.

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lolc
So now cop-tipping will be a thing in China?

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ccvannorman
Is it just me, or does this robot look very..um.. kickable? I sort of want to
kick it over~

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beeboop
Probably weighs hundreds of pounds and is bottom heavy. I doubt even tipping
it would be easy.

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orionblastar
If you need to escape one of these Daleks or whatever, just run up a flight of
stairs. Until they get a hover upgrade they still work on wheels.

Spraypaint on its camera will make it blind, no need to kick it over then.

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ccvannorman
I'm looking forward to the day when those Japanese-style obstacle-course shows
include "man vs riot robot".

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ytNumbers
You have ten seconds to comply...

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wodahs02
Doesn't seem like a smart design. Can't people just kick it over?

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jbclements
How do you say "Exterminate! Exterminate!" in Chinese?

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fallingmeat
Note to self, don't stand directly in front of leg grabber

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rrauenza
That's ok, they come equipped with an egg beater and plunger as well.

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DonRico
Hah, saw a photo of that "robot". Disney will sue them for copyright
infringement since it's R2D2 look-alike.

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astazangasta
Serious question: which one of you is working on the EMP cannon designs to
fight all of these fascist robots?

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gene-h
There are much simpler solutions to fighting the robots in the article. One
could also score a sensor kill by draping a big plastic garbage bag over it.
If one uses a space blanket or something that absorbs RF, one would disable it
too. The robots in the article can only handle flat terrain. So putting down
rocks and debris will severely limit their mobility. Entanglement is also a
nice option to limit mobility. Simply tipping the robot over will pretty much
disable it.

A lasso is a particularly entertaining option in the last two regards. One
could lasso up said robot and pull it over.

Now if one really wants to get high tech we can do stuff like jam the
lidars(flashing some LEDs) and sonar(making some noise). Without obstacle
sensors like these, said robots are gonna be much harder to teleoperate.

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vonnik
it looks a lot like the Knightscope K5, which is being billed as a security
measure against school shootings.
[http://knightscope.com/](http://knightscope.com/) funny what each country is
most afraid of...

~~~
ry_ry
Here in Britain we use them to prevent people jumping queues at the post
office.

The parallel development of these globally does suggest we will be seeing a
lot more drone-based policing in the future, and will be gleefully cracking
open the inevitable can of worms when some of the accountability is removed
from high pressure flashpoints and/or they have the ability to deploy lethal
force.

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Joof
Mmmm jam it's wireless and grab it. I want to steal one.

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sqeaky
This is scary.

