BY-YOUR-COMMAND. AND-FETCH-ME-ANOTHER-BEER-OR-I"LL-HOSE-YOU-DOWN-WITH-MY-GIGANTIC-[del]PENIS[/del]-WATERCANNON.
http://www.newsdaily.com/Quirks/UPI-1-20080221-17022600-bc-us-robot.xml
Danger! Danger! Warning Will Robinson! My highball glass is empty & we’re out of peanuts.
Exterminate
Exterminate
Exterminate
Exterminate
No no, thats “EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!” Gotta get the Skaro accent right. 
just Who are you?
This Atlanta business man will smoke the bad guys out.
More detailed story, complete with picture. Apparently, the neighbors’ reactions range from “I wish I had two or three more robo-cops” to “It’s inhumane”.
Apparently it has a camera and a loudspeaker. What I’d like to know is whether the guy speaks as himself controlling a robot, or if he speaks as if he is the robot.
Daleks? You people didn’t watch enough bad science fiction. This security robot looks more like the title ‘bot from Ivan Tors’ too-forgotten 1950s 3D SciFi epic Gog:
What it lacks (and Gog had) is a FLAME-THROWER. I could never understand why the movie Gof had a flame-thrower built in. It seemed at least as stupid as the reprogrammed killer dog-bot in Red Planet, but I guess a lot of film-makers have to go with the tediously obvious.
It’s not ED-209.
Low pressure water “cannon” used on private property, after a warning, and the cop suggests this could end up with assault charges? :dubious:
Can I get assault charges filed on the kids with supersoakers in the neighborhood?
I like how the police will go down and arrest him for assault, but continually fail to address the problems that caused the man to build the robot in the first place.
Some people have their priorities all wrong.
They can prevent average people from breaking the law. Drug addicts, they can’t do anything but lock up for a day and then things will be back right where they were. So it makes sense from their standpoint.
What’s to stop the vagrants from just tipping the robot over? It doesn’t sound like a very effective security guard to me. Cool idea though.
Presumably, the cop meant that assault charges could be made if this happens on public property. The police spokesperson’s comment seemed to be a general response to the issue of using a robot to spray people, rather than on the legality of using it on private property with the permission of the property owner.
I’d be interested to see a recorded encounter between the robot and the people it targets. From details given in the story, it seems to me that this is the day-care center in question. Looking at its website, the name of one of the Board of Directors is Lydia Meredith, the day-care center operator named in the story. And it’s just down the road from the robot-builder’s bar.
Looking at the satellite image, you can see that there seems to be plenty of private property there, off the sidewalk, where vagrants and drug dealers and users could potentially gather. If the robot is being used strictly on that private property, i’ve got no problem with it.
But if i were on the public sidewalk there, and this robot told me to leave, and started spraying water, i’d be on the phone to the cops in 5 seconds flat.
What, you mean like the criminalization of non-violent drug offenses that land so many Americans in jail in the first place? Or the lack of social services that leads to over 1,000 people trying to cram into a single shelter on winter’s nights?
You got that right.
It’s not that bad a part of town.
I think this is a guy with a bit of a grudge and he figures the publicity will be good for business.
I’d marry that man if he’d program it to say “Bite my shiny metal ass!” Seriously.
Seconded. I want to see him try that shit in the Southern parts, around MLK Dr. I don’t think it’d last a few hours.
Deploy it in Bankhead. Shooting ensues.
I always get excited when I read national news about Atlanta, especially robot crime-fighting news. When I read it was O’Terrills over on Piedmont, I was just kinda confused. Sounds like he’s just spraying the homeless in a misguided attempt at vigilante justice. I think real criminals would destroy this thing.
I’m inclined to agree. But as long as he’s operating just on private property with the property owner’s permission, I think he’d be in the clear.
And while I suspect there’s some aspect of vigilante justice involved, here, I think there’s also a bit of wisdom: Technically, it’s not a robot - it’s a Remote Operated Vehicle. So the control and trigger discretion issues I’d have for a genuinely autonomous device just aren’t there. And if one is confronting drug dealers, using an ROV seems the course of prudence: Worst case scenario - it can be shot to Hell, without the operator getting hurt. And by using low pressure water, it’s unlikely to cause any harm to its targets.
Call it a ROVing Security Guard. 