Will Robots Replace Rent-a-Cops? 157
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Now, an EU-funded, £7.2 million ($11 million USD) collaborative project, called Strands, is underway in England to develop 4D, artificial intelligence for security and care applications. It aims to produce intelligent robo-sentinels that can patrol areas, and learn to detect abnormalities in human behavior. Could their project eventually replace security guards with robots? It looks possible. Strands, as Nick Hawes of the University of Birmingham said, will 'develop novel approaches to extract spatio-temporal structure from sensor data gathered during months of autonomous operation,' to develop intelligence that can then 'exploit [those] structures to yield adaptive behavior in highly demanding, real-world security and care scenarios.'"
Only if you can pay less Insurance (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality of a security guard is your main job is...to lower insurance costs. The reasons if you need to be a serious criminal to want to go through a human, these robots don't have deterrent...but I suspect nothing like the costs. The fact is accountants will decide this one.
In case your confused about what a security guard really does this is a clip from mike leighs Naked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N90sl94g7PE [youtube.com]
Re:"abnormalities in human behavior"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can these robots use tasers or shoot people with firearms? Many "rent a cops" are off-duty police officers earning a little beer money.
I'd rather trust an armed robot over a rent-a-cop any day. Last time one shot at me, the real cops that showed up hauled him off and lamented I didn't use the firearm we all agreed wasn't under the seat of my car...