4 ms·

A protest starts, people take to the streets, hong kong style. The police force, greatly outnumbered by the protestors, call in the "dogs". Armored trucks pull

A protest starts, people take to the streets, hong kong style. The police force, greatly outnumbered by the protestors, call in the "dogs". Armored trucks pull up, the sides slide open revealing a large hydraulic rack with dozens of "dogs" racked up and fully charged. Armed with tasers, pepper spray and tear gas, these little robot dogs are a cops best friend. The machine whirs to life, extends and unloads the "dogs" battle droid style, while a controlling human uses a RTS like interface to move the dogs into a formation and gives orders to begin herding the human protestors. In seconds, dozens, maybe even hundreds of these mechanical beasts gallop towards the protestors and begin a herding process not unlike a sheep dog. The attack is swift and chaotic to the humans but highly organized and planned by an AI system controlling them as a flock. Pepper spray and tear gas fills the air as people are chased and intimidated by the mechanical creatures. Protesters who dare attack the "dogs" are recorded by the dogs as they are all equipped with real time video and charged with destruction of police property after arrest. Facial recognition is used to locate high value targets such as political figures or organizers. The terrorfied humans are quickly disoriented, broken up and herded into groups. Surrounded on all sides by robot dogs, their arms raised with their tear gas/pepper spray nozzles at the ready. Finally the human police force rolls up in full riot gear and enough plasticuffs to wrap around the earth. The protestors are quietly arrested, no one was badly hurt, and not a single officer was scratched in the roundup. Suddenly, a scared protestor bolts past the line, prompting two dogs to instantly give chase and taser the offender. Easy peasy. It's not even noon yet and the protest is fully quelled. The same scene repeats itself all over the world. A man looks down from his ivory tower on the scene below, smiles, and sips coffee from his alphabet security branded mug. I weep for the future.

germinalphrase 7y ago
> Protesters show up with Tupperware bins and promptly begin capturing and subduing the dogs. I’m sympathetic - I guess - to your general point, but conflicts are dynamic.
kitd 7y ago
Then the dogs turn on their handlers ... and you have the makings of a Black Mirror episode.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Those Boston dynamics robots are expensive small and would be easy to take down with nets or other innovative counter measures. For China Once your getting to the point of a riot its cheaper to bus in police / paramilitary from a distant province and have them kick some peoples heads in
ryanmercer 7y ago
SPOILERS!!! You can't just leak the new Robocop sequel plot like that! Wait, wait this is actually a plausible real-world scenario. Isn't that just wild? Who needs ED-209 terrorizing the streets when you could have a robotic 'dog' that could just shove its way through a crowd and start emitting an ear-slitting cacophony of disruptive sounds to encourage a crowd to disperse them. Imagine, a line of them directing sound in one direction, creating a disorienting and potentially painful 'wall of sound' slowly pushing the crowd away from them. If that fails they fan out into the crowd, lower to the ground and and bring their limbs in to protect them and start puffing out a mist of pepper spray straight up into the air while its 'packmates' are similarly spread out throughout the crowd. If an officer goes down, or a citizen, you can move the dogs to their location and have them start a circle around them to create a defensive deterrent from violent protesters or a stampeding crowd while using a speaker to reassure the wounded person (if conscious) that help is on the way. As help approaches you can even have them create a corridor, nudging people to make a hole in the crowd or again, using a painful sound, to encourage people to move out of the way. You could also use one or more to ferry out body armor, additional ammunition or weapons systems, medical supplies etc. Depending on the situation a drone might not be usable (weight, too conspicuous, low clearance) and these would be more practical. You could probably slightly modify and use these dogs in a combat/shooting situation as well. Have one run out and hook a clip to the drag handle on an injured person's carrier (body armor) and either use a winch back at a safe location to pull them to safety or simply send enough of these units out to pull them back under the power of the dogs. For that matter you could arm one of these too with less than lethal or a more traditional round. Send a couple into a building under remote control just ahead of people when clearing a building. You could also equip these with any number of sensor packages and send them into areas that might be dangerous to humans not wearing a considerable amount of PPE. They could probably cover more distance, and go faster, than tracked robots (that often have wires running back to the operator). They could go in under radio control sending back live video or go in 'roomba' style and explore for x amount of time before returning with whatever data they capture.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
In a sense, cyberpunk reality seems a lot closer than initially anticipated.
shrubble 7y ago
How resilient are these robots to a length of rope, with one end tied to a lamppost, and the other used to snare the head or a limb? ?
anigbrowl 7y ago
A lot of this happens already minus the robots. Conversely, protest organizers/professional activists are rather more technologically sophisticated and capable than might at first be apparent. As in many historic military conflicts, the shock value of a new technology can be decisive at first but has a short half-life.
- MisterTea 7y ago
  The big difference here is that the robots have no fear or emotion. They won't care for their safety and wont react to threats with fear. So throw all the rocks, bottles and flaming bags of shit you want because these things are going to come for you no matter what. That's the scary part, emotionless, fearless machines.

germinalphrase 7y ago

> Protesters show up with Tupperware bins and promptly begin capturing and subduing the dogs. I’m sympathetic - I guess - to your general point, but conflicts are dynamic.

kitd 7y ago

Then the dogs turn on their handlers ... and you have the makings of a Black Mirror episode.

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Those Boston dynamics robots are expensive small and would be easy to take down with nets or other innovative counter measures. For China Once your getting to the point of a riot its cheaper to bus in police / paramilitary from a distant province and have them kick some peoples heads in

ryanmercer 7y ago

SPOILERS!!! You can't just leak the new Robocop sequel plot like that! Wait, wait this is actually a plausible real-world scenario. Isn't that just wild? Who needs ED-209 terrorizing the streets when you could have a robotic 'dog' that could just shove its way through a crowd and start emitting an ear-slitting cacophony of disruptive sounds to encourage a crowd to disperse them. Imagine, a line of them directing sound in one direction, creating a disorienting and potentially painful 'wall of sound' slowly pushing the crowd away from them. If that fails they fan out into the crowd, lower to the ground and and bring their limbs in to protect them and start puffing out a mist of pepper spray straight up into the air while its 'packmates' are similarly spread out throughout the crowd. If an officer goes down, or a citizen, you can move the dogs to their location and have them start a circle around them to create a defensive deterrent from violent protesters or a stampeding crowd while using a speaker to reassure the wounded person (if conscious) that help is on the way. As help approaches you can even have them create a corridor, nudging people to make a hole in the crowd or again, using a painful sound, to encourage people to move out of the way. You could also use one or more to ferry out body armor, additional ammunition or weapons systems, medical supplies etc. Depending on the situation a drone might not be usable (weight, too conspicuous, low clearance) and these would be more practical. You could probably slightly modify and use these dogs in a combat/shooting situation as well. Have one run out and hook a clip to the drag handle on an injured person's carrier (body armor) and either use a winch back at a safe location to pull them to safety or simply send enough of these units out to pull them back under the power of the dogs. For that matter you could arm one of these too with less than lethal or a more traditional round. Send a couple into a building under remote control just ahead of people when clearing a building. You could also equip these with any number of sensor packages and send them into areas that might be dangerous to humans not wearing a considerable amount of PPE. They could probably cover more distance, and go faster, than tracked robots (that often have wires running back to the operator). They could go in under radio control sending back live video or go in 'roomba' style and explore for x amount of time before returning with whatever data they capture.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

In a sense, cyberpunk reality seems a lot closer than initially anticipated.

shrubble 7y ago

How resilient are these robots to a length of rope, with one end tied to a lamppost, and the other used to snare the head or a limb? ?

anigbrowl 7y ago

A lot of this happens already minus the robots. Conversely, protest organizers/professional activists are rather more technologically sophisticated and capable than might at first be apparent. As in many historic military conflicts, the shock value of a new technology can be decisive at first but has a short half-life.

MisterTea 7y ago
The big difference here is that the robots have no fear or emotion. They won't care for their safety and wont react to threats with fear. So throw all the rocks, bottles and flaming bags of shit you want because these things are going to come for you no matter what. That's the scary part, emotionless, fearless machines.