This Robot Collects Fingerprints 188
Roland Piquepaille writes "When police officers found suspicious packages today in an airport or a train station, they destroyed them immediately, along with potential fingerprints on them. A new robotic device, dubbed RAFFE (short for "Robot Accessory for Fuming Fingerprint Evidence), developed by scientists from the University of Toronto (U of T) and the University of Calgary, offers a solution to this problem. Mounted on an ordinary robot, it will reveal fingerprints by releasing Super Glue on the object. Then it will take pictures of these fingerprints. The Calgary Police Service is already using RAFFE for field tests. This overview contains more details and extra references."
Re:Beverly Hillls Cop, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they don't have a human doing this work, is because it is a dangerous assignment, investigating a suspecious package. Normally the robot would just destroy the package, finger prints and all. Now they can make images of the prints before destroying the package.
Remote Controlled Device not robot (Score:5, Insightful)
A robot is an autonomous object responding to its environment.
A remote controlled device is under direct control.
We call them
Remote Controlled Cars
Remote Controlled Planes
these are clearly not "ROBOTS".
Why are the more esoteric remote controlled devices called robots?
Homer Simpson moment (Score:4, Insightful)
With all the crap patents we hear about in this forum, it's great to read about a simple, obvious invention that someone actually invented - an idea that's actually worth some real credit.
But it still makes me wanna kick myself for not thinking of it first.
Re:Isn't there a (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will the evidence hold up in court? (Score:2, Insightful)
> Are digital photographs of the fingerprints... submittable as evidence in a court of law?
Under the PATRIOT act, a model of the fingerprints sculpted entirely out of CHEEZ-WHIZ would be admissable.
"...because if we can't use creamy, cheezy goodness to keep this nation safe, then the terrorists have already won." - John Ashcroft
Re:Remote Controlled Device not robot (Score:1, Insightful)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or better yet, involve someone to handle the package for him/her, throwing the trail off?
This is only going to catch the dummies, who most likely have already blown themselves up.
Re:Will the evidence hold up in court? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mounted on an ordinary robot (Score:3, Insightful)
An ordinary "bomb disposal" robot would be better. I might also take exception to the term "robot", if I wanted to be a jerk about it.
Good idea, though. I'm sure if they thought about it, they could add a whole swiss-army knife's worth of gadgets to the arms on those things.
Re:Remote Controlled Device not robot (Score:3, Insightful)
So traffic lights are now robots?
A pinball machine is now a robot?
An old mechanical telephone exchange is a robot?
My car is now a robot? (the whole car as an electro mechincal system responding to inputs, does it matter if I sit, in it, on it, or 50' away and control it over wires.
I would give it to assembly line robots as electro-mechanical systems responding to programmed code with little more than on/off and sensors for inputs.
Putting humans directly in the control loop stops making it a robot. Having humans direct, a'la slave, would still meet the definition of a robot.
Re:Will the evidence hold up in court? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I smell sitcom! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Counter-Robot (Score:3, Insightful)
that is an oxymoron.. or actually in reality is' exceedingly rare to find a smart criminal.
and this, my friends, is a GOOD THING. imagine if the braindead-turds in a gang discovered what a 30-6 hunting rifle and a good scope can do. or the same rifle and some well welded together washers that you lightly machine just right can do to the sound of that rifle.
Criminals are stupid to the extreme... that is why they are criminals.
Re:Proud Canadian (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, do you really think the far-right in the US, the people who will say and do whatever they want to support their pet projects, care about facts (this'll make em see the light)? Of course they don't. They care about promoting xenophobia, paranoia, and the illusion of safety. All to get some funding for the local military base, or the local tech center that's developing a massive big brother database, or whatever other number of slush fund contributors they need to appease. If that means creating an illusion of a complacent Canada because we don't jump everytime their narrowsighted, politically charged so-called-intelligence agencies uncreatively imagine a threat (usually be imagining the prior threat repeating), then that's a price they're will to make someone else pay.