Real-life RoboCop Will Replace Human Cops By 2020
Police car, Dubai style
Dubai is planning to unleash a robotic policeman, which will begin preventing crime by the year 2020.
The desert city has announced plans to fit real-life robocops with artificial intelligence systems to help them automatically stop criminals.
"Robots could do the work of a police officer on ground at certain situations," Colonel Khalid Razooqi, general director of the Dubai Police Smart Department, told Emirates 24/7 .
"The project we are working on will involve robots interacting with people and performing some responsibilities that of a police officer."
Dubai has already given its police officers a mobile app which lets them issue parking tickets, but the next step in the evolution of robotic law enforcement is likely to prove more difficult to implement - both morally and practically.
China is also planning to use machines to keep humans under control.
The People's Republic has built a 1.5m-tall police robot that's designed to keep rioters under control by electrocuting them.
According to Chinese newspaper People , the 'droid was built by the ominously-sounding National Defense University and "will play an important role in enhancing the country's anti-terrorism and anti-riot measures".
The robot's controllers can opt to remotely deploy its "electrically charged riot control tool" if things get too violent.
