146 Just ordinAry robots
certainly caveats. Using a road map for the future, Sharkey is trying
to visualize the implications of current developments in the eld of
police robots. e road map outlined by Sharkey begins in the pres-
ent and ends in the year 2084—a clear reference to Orwell’s 1984.
Sharkey shows that currently, robots may be used for mobile surveil-
lance and detection of explosives. In 2084, there may be a humanoid
police robot walking down the street that is connected to a network
of cameras, databases, and other robots, which assists in road safety,
riot control, crowd control, locating missing persons, or interrogating
dangerous suspects. According to Sharkey, in the future robots will
take over all kinds of police tasks and they will increasingly perform
these tasks more independently.
Police robots today resemble remote-controlled toy vehicles rather
than police ocers, as even opening a door can already present an
insurmountable obstacle.
While the “Robocop” will remain to be science ction for a long
time, robots are already being used by the police for dangerous, dull,
and dirty police work. Robots can perform boring work or danger-
ous jobs without loss of concentration and can reach places that are
otherwise dicult to access by a human or another technical tool.
In Great Britain, robots have been used since the Irish Republican
Army (IRA) era for removing bombs, and since the late 1980s the
remotely controlled so-called V-A1 robots have been used to inspect
possible hazardous situations in the State of Virginia (United States).*
ese V-A1 robots are equipped with cameras, chemical detection
equipment, and a mechanical arm to grab objects. ey enable agent-
operators to assess dangerous situations from a distance without run-
ning risks themselves.
Although there are some land-based police robots, we see an
increasing use of drones by law enforcement agencies. is is mainly
due to the huge investments and developments in military drone tech-
nology (see Chapter 6), from which law enforcement agencies benet.
Furthermore, law enforcement agencies expect a great deal of good to
come from robots for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes, and
drones may ideally serve these purposes. In this section, we will dis-
cuss law enforcement drones, mainly those used by the police.
*
http://ww2.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/230806.