The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 11, 2011

Official News page 6


ROBOT ROUND-UP III: ROBOT PRISON WARDERS

by Hazed

This story is about not-so-cute robots. South Korea is about to employ robots as wardens in its prisons.

A jail in Pohang, in the east of the country, plans to run a trial lasting a month using three droid screws*. The mechanical martinets will monitor the inmates for abnormal behaviour, which the researchers say will help reduce the workload for the other guards.

The three robots are five foot high and move on four wheels. They have cameras and other sensors that allow them to detect risky behaviours such as violence and suicide. They will then alert human guards if they discover a problem.

Professor Lee Baik-Chu of Kyonggi University, who has led the design process, said, "We are now working on refining its details to make it look more friendly to inmates."

Well. Not sure how friendly you want the warders to look. And given that the robo-guards will presumably be programmed with a fairly limited range of signs to watch out for, it shouldn't take long for canny inmates to figure out how to fool them so they can get away with all kinds of banned behaviour under the noses (or equivalent) of their droid keepers.

Not to mention the possibility of "false positives", with the robots reporting problems because they misinterpret perfectly innocent actions.

* UK slang for prison officers.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15893772


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