Roomba Meets Terminator: Armed SWAT-Bot

by Jordan Yerman | June 29, 2007 at 09:48 am

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iRobot, of Roomba fame, have come up with a new autonomous 'bot... this one is armed with a Taser. The reasoning is sound, I suppose: an infantry robot to support flesh-and blood troops or SWAT officers. However, the risk is high. What if it malfunctions? Well, "what if" has nothing to do with it: it will definitely, sooner or later, malfunction, as all computer systems do.

iRobot Corporation -- maker of bomb-handling and floor-sweeping machines -- has teamed up with the shocketeers at Taser International "to develop new robots that can remotely engage, incapacitate and control dangerous suspects," a company statement pronounces.

The idea is to quip a PackBot with a X26 stun gun, giving "SWAT, law enforcement and military" types "a new ability to control dangerous suspects while keeping personnel, the suspect and bystanders out of harm's way."

There's another element to this that the WIRED folks don't explicitly mention, and that is the possibility of turning this thing loose on a crowd of, say, protesters, and then blaming the ensuing injuries or deaths on a malfunction.