Real-life Robocop to patrol with a police department
A robot cop isn't the future -- it's now. Dubai police added a robotic officer to its force, and plans to add more over the next few years. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t have a gun.)
It even knows how to salute.
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The city plans on recruiting a lot of the bots so they eventually make up 25 percent of the force by 2030.
The police department's one robot already patrolled the Gulf Information Security Expo and Conference in the United Arab Emirates this week.
Next up is patrolling the massive Dubai Mall, which posted that the robot loves selfies and will be around all week.
The robot, first launched in 2011, is from Spanish company PAL Robotics. The robocop is a REEM, a full-sized humanoid robot that can speak and understand several languages.
In an interview with CNN, Brigadier Khalid Nasser Alrazooqi, general director of the Smart Services Department of the Dubai police, said, "The robot is going to be an interactive service for the people."
While Dubai's newest officer isn't quite the 1980s cyborg everyone's thinking of, the machine will still be able to answer questions, provide information about services on its touchscreen computer, process fines and tickets, and use its camera eyes to send information back to a command center.
Stay out of trouble!
Topics Artificial Intelligence
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
