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China Robotics Security Hardware

China's New Policing Computer Is Frontend Cattle Prod, Backend Supercomputer (computerworld.com) 69

Earlier this year, we learned about China's first "intelligent security robot," which was said to include "electrically charged riot control tool." We now know what this robot is up to, and what its developed unit looks like. Reader dcblogs writes: China recently deployed what it calls a "security robot" in a Shenzhen airport. It's named AnBot and patrols around the clock. It is a cone-shaped robot that includes a cattle prod. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which look at autonomous system deployments in a report last week, said AnBot, which has facial recognition capability, is designed to be linked with China's latest supercomputers. AnBot may seem like a 'Saturday Night Live' prop, but it's far from it. The back end of this "intelligent security robot" is linked to China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, where it has access to cloud services. AnBot conducts patrols, recognizes threats and has multiple cameras that use facial recognition. These cloud services give the robots petascale processing power, well beyond onboard processing capabilities in the robot. The supercomputer connection is there "to enhance the intelligent learning capabilities and human-machine interface of these devices," said the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review.
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China's New Policing Computer Is Frontend Cattle Prod, Backend Supercomputer

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  • Hilarity ensues.

    Or is it Hirarity enshues?
  • by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:08PM (#53185733)

    "to enhance the intelligent learning capabilities and human-machine interface of these devices,"
    I've observed that a cattle prod is an effective motivator to enhance learning. It works really well on programmers.

  • by TWX ( 665546 ) on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:12PM (#53185755)
    ...we'll defeat it with stairs. Or a ladder. Or an unimproved surface. Or a thick carpet. Or a piece of wood left laying on the floor. Or a doorway that's slightly too narrow.
  • by birukun ( 145245 ) on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:25PM (#53185881)

    How awesome will this be when it gets hijacked for service in an IoT botnet?

    What could possibly go wrong?

  • by Verdatum ( 1257828 ) on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:29PM (#53185927)
    Hey, msmash, Why do you have that phrase set up as an anchor, but didn't include a link along with it?
    • Yes, basic understanding of HTML 1.0 is now beyond the Slashdot editors.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Or they just made a mistake.
        That happens sometimes to actual people.

    • Right? It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that it was a broken anchor tag.
  • So it is deployed at an airport that serves millions of people. Yet there are no videos of it anywhere. How odd.
  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:36PM (#53185985) Journal
    ..this isn't funny; in fact, I find it to be distinctly unfunny. Knowing China and it's human rights/civil rights record, sounds to me more like 'Human and Civil Rights Violator Robot' than anything regarding 'security', unless you want to look at in in the vein of 'security of the Chinese communist regime'. In my opinion, it's bad enough when you have humans oppressing humans, but it's an order of magnitude worse when you have a machine oppressing humans; naturally these 'bots could be ordered to do anything to anyone, up to and including killing them, and since they're not alive, have no conscience, have no emotions, they'll just do it. This is a dark day for Chinese citizens if you ask me.
  • Great thinking, a police robot that can be neutered with a WiFi jammer.

  • It will be trivially easy to disable China's entire army of robot enforcers.

    1. Sneak into the supercomputer base. This is usually possible by jumping onto the back of a delivery truck.

    2. These facilities always have air ducts connecting every room. The ducts are always well lit, and at big enough for two people to crawl through them abreast. Jump into the nearest duct, find the supercomputer, pull out the grate that is just resting on the ceiling, then jump down onto it.

    3. Nobody will be in the room at fir

  • I have to ask because I can't help but notice http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0922/c90000-9118480.html the lettering for Police is crooked and askew and also English.
    • One thing they still have yet to perfect is English. Maybe they know they're doing it but English language manuals from Chinese manufactures are still barely comprehensible. Would make sense that they don't really know how the position of English alphabet letters work.
      • Maybe but a straight line isn't all that complicated. What makes no sense at all is the Chinese robot is writing Police in English at all, maybe as an alternate since it is an airport robot there are no chinese characters visible.
        • by ghoul ( 157158 )

          No. Its a conspiracy. That way when the robots run amok and kill Chinese citizens they can blame it on the Gaijin - The robots had English writing so America must have sent them.

  • ... that using centralized control over your army of robots was a poor design choice?

  • No problem. Wear a bandana a sunglasses to the demonstration.
  • When the US, Europe or Japan builds a fantastically expensive new supercomputer they use it to study the high energy physics of a star or climate modeling or some other science with extreme computational needs while in China they apparently build supercomputer to link to cattle-prod bearing robots meant to monitor and control the populace.

    And there are still people that think China is going to win some worldwide battle of culture.

    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      The US has enough Supercomputers doing facial recognition. 80% of police departments use them. The computers feltover from spying are used for Space science high energy physics. True story - In the 2000s when the NSA launched their new series of telescopes pointed downwards/ spy satellites they offered to let NASA use the old batch launched in the 80s and 90s. NASA scientists had their egos crushed when they realized these space telescopes were still better than Hubble and Chndra even though they launched 2

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