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Huntington Park’s “RoboCop” stores pedestrians’ faces, scans license plates
- excalibur 7y agoThis is the same model as the "suicidal" robot from DC a couple of years back. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/suicidal-robot-did-not-kill-itself-fountain-accident-loose-brick-surface-a7866856.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/suicidal-r...
- IronWolve 7y agoThought this security robot was the same.
- snsr 7y agoKnightscope robots also assault children apparently without repercussions. https://abc7news.com/news/parents-upset-after-stanford-mall-robot-injures-child/1423093/ https://abc7news.com/news/parents-upset-after-stanford-mall-... I wonder whether a cardboard box is a good first line of defense against these?
- yoz-y 7y agoI wonder what the problem was. The article states that the robot first ran over the child. Are the sensors scanning only too high? How does it avoid low obstacles then? At the peril of sounding heartless I’d say that it is quite probable that the kid ran into the robot because they were not watching where they were going, it has happened to me several times that a kid ran into me from the back.
- VectorLock 7y agoI know there is probably a good reason they made it look like a Cylon, some down-forward facing sensor, but its still really funny to me.
- cortesoft 7y agoI was thinking it looks more like a Dalek...
- VectorLock 7y agoIts like if a Cylon and a Dalek had a baby. Adorable.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoWith the colouration of Marvin the Paranoid Android.
- devoply 7y agoHarder and hard to write any sort of fiction where the protagonist does anything slightly illegal, not to mention extremely illegal, and is not immediately apprehended.
- mkl 7y agoVery few people violating the law are immediately apprehended for it. It would be very hard to write realistic contemporary fiction where that happened consistently.
- asteli 7y agoI'm waiting for someone stick a speaker to one that just repeats "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINAAAATE!" line as this robot bumbles around whatever corporate campus it's deployed on.
- elwell 7y agoHopefully they remember to leave their phone at home or blocking their face won't be sufficient to protect their identity.
- tzs 7y agoRight idea, but it should be playing the dialog from the classic arcade game Berzerk [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxCTd0Y9wYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxCTd0Y9wYo
- caymanjim 7y agoI don't see this thing surviving for too long. Someone's going to vandalize it or steal it, even with its array of sensors.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoso they'll make them harder to destroy...or put them 30 feet up in the air. Sadly, we're screwed. This is staying
- rhacker 7y agoI give it 3 months before someone with a mask on shows up and shoots it 8 times in the "head". Same result with a drone. That's why the ones in the movie robocop worked, because it had guns, and a mind of its own (usually a brain from a convict too). This is more like a roomba with a camera. I don't think anyone will steal it for fear of GPS tracking.
- elwell 7y agoAnd then get sued based on their phone id being sent back to homebase: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6239554-13-Staff-Report-K5-HP-RoboCop-11-6-18.html#document/p2/a516150 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6239554-13-Staff-Rep...
- Avery3R 7y agoSo... don't bring a phone?
- caymanjim 7y agoI don't expect it will be destroyed by a cunning criminal with an agenda. It's just going to get beaten up by some kids goofing around, or some drunk dude walking home from the pub, or someone who just wants to smash things. They'll quite possibly get caught.
- 7y ago
- rhacker 7y agoThe referenced twitter link shows a news broadcast of them describing it. He starts to laugh near the end of what he was saying - almost like he was going to say, this can't end well. And then she blurts out - I Kinda Like It - cutting him off. haha
- reaperducer 7y agoNo need to even vandalize the thing. Just shove it over.
- ryanisnan 7y agoIt weighs around 400lbs. Pushing it over is not something most would be capable of. Were they successful, It has omni-directional vision, and undoubtedly that information is sent to the cloud almost immediately, so this seems like a bad strategy.
- brk 7y agoWell, the company is nearly bankrupt and has lost a lot of people lately so odds are you might get away with it.
- monocasa 7y agoYou can push over a cow. It all depends on where the center of mass is. And you just wear a mask if you don't want to be caught.
- misterdoubt 7y agoGive me a lever, a place to stand, and a mask.
- anigbrowl 7y agoOh that's easily defeated. A motorized spy platform falling over is no big tragedy.
- throwaway07Ju19 7y ago> There’s nothing in the documentation to indicate what criteria the the HPPD would use, or is currently using, to add a face, license plate, or smartphones to a “blacklist,” Regulation can't come soon enough for this industry. About 20 years ago one of the youngest cops ever to be promoted to detective in the City of Chicago told me this after a long night of drinking... "If I see a car with more than two black people, I just followed it. Sooner or later they'll make a mistake and I can pull them over. Very often one of them will have an outstanding warrant.". When my face turned to horror he asked me the jaw-dropping question "you are Italian, right ?" Honestly, if ML is statistically driven, how long before it determines that African Americans and Latinos are over represented in the criminal database and should have a higher blacklist score as a rule and the whole cycle repeats. Meanwhile innocent looking white kids can keep selling meth in the park.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoYou are strongly implying racism with this cop, is it possible he just understands basic statistics? If he followed a car with 2 Chinese/Mexicans/etc... in it, would he have the same results? Using statistics, what would a robot do?
- mikeyouse 7y agoThis is a terrible excuse and violates many, many civil protections that we ostensibly have.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoI am not suggesting he is correct, I am simply pointing out that if your job is to arrest people with outstanding warrants, how would you go about it? (again, if you were a robot) Can a robot be racist?
- mikeyouse 7y agoGross. God that New Yorker article was onto something.
- harimau777 7y agoHow do you blacklist someone from a city?
- decebalus1 7y agoSoon enough, It will also store pedestrians' feces.
- whalesalad 7y agoIn San Francisco a shit sucking robot would be transformative.
- anigbrowl 7y agoWhy bother? You're doing such a great job.
- whalesalad 7y agoThis is without a doubt the most hostile thing anyone has ever said to me on HN. I’m impressed.
- mikestew 7y agoThe interesting thing is that it came from ten year old account with 58K karma. Everybody has a bad day, I guess.
- anigbrowl 7y agoI had a great day. It was not I who chose to take the conversation in a scatalogical direction; I just encouraged the person who did so to stick with their stated area of expertise.
- Animats 7y agoThere's one of those Knighscope K5 units at The Beacon, in San Francisco, between 4th, 5th, King, and Townsend. It's very slow moving in its normal mode. You can walk up to it. It's probably there to keep homeless people from camping in their plaza. Or maybe to discourage the undesirable element of drunk white guys from the ballpark.[1] [1] https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Knuckleheads-run-amok-after-Giants-win-3990567.php https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Knuckleheads-run-amok-a...
- i_am_nomad 7y agoIs there a reason you chose to specify race there? Or are you just a racist?
- whalesalad 7y agoMost cop cars these days have scanners on the rear trunk that will scan license plates as it drives by. https://www.flickr.com/photos/72131699@N00/3803321792 https://www.flickr.com/photos/72131699@N00/3803321792 Note this photo was taken in 2009. This is not a new concept.
- WWLink 7y agoSome towns in LA mounted those on their traffic lights around the edge of town. Yep.
- rb808 7y agoIs this like the one that drowned a few years back? https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/17/15986042/dc-security-robot-k5-falls-into-water https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/17/15986042/dc-security...
- oooshha 7y agoI will pop on a Hong Kong style facemask and push this thing down a staircase.
- newshorts 7y agoI don’t know why (maybe it’s the shape or something...) but this thing elicits a strong desire within me to run it over with my pickup. Then incinerate the remaining pieces with a boring company flame thrower.
- vondur 7y agoIt’ll probably get stolen or vandalized in that area. Source, I live nearby.
- asdff 7y ago8k/month to do a $20/hr at most job. Just hire another meter maid, they can actually restrain someone or conduct first aid. Classic small town logic, all about the shiny new toys.