Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2012. It is a news item about a trial then under way; the outcome of the experiment and the robot’s estimated price of $300,000 date from that time.
We’re getting closer to the civil servants of the future. A prison in South Korea is testing its three new prison guards. These guards aren’t human-shaped, but they process information better than a human, so by analysing inmates’ behaviour they could help prevent suicides, fights, fires and so on. They could also cover the shifts and rounds of several officers, reducing the need for staff.
Each robot is equipped with several 3D cameras and microphones, plus software that processes information on inmates’ behaviour, to the point of detecting when a prisoner is suffering from anxiety (risk of suicide) and when several prisoners are moving abruptly (risk of a disturbance). Once the information is gathered, an alarm goes off in the control room, where a human officer can see what is happening and decide what to do.
The robots follow their programmed rounds thanks to several sensors installed in the prison ceiling. When a robot’s battery drops to 20%, it automatically heads to the charging area.
This is expected to be the future of guard assistants in Korean prisons (if the experiment works). Each robot could currently be valued at $300,000. You can see the video of the work they do below.
Source: Mashable
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Featured image: Dr.yellow, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
