This Police Robot Is So Useless It Can't Even Call For Help

Dhir Acharya - Oct 10, 2019

If there were an emergency on the street, it’s common sense to expect that a police robot will kick in or call for help. But this one doesn't.

If there were an emergency on the street and there is a police robot nearby, it’s common sense to expect that the robot will kick in or call for help. However, this robot did neither of those, instead, it just told the person to get out of the way and went on with its patrol.

NBC News reported that a woman saw a fight broke out and spotted the police robot in a parking lot at a park. But rather than pressing multiple times on the emergency alert button, the robot only asked the woman to step aside then carried on with its preprogrammed path. It occasionally told people to keep the park clean. Finally, someone called the police the traditional way, they came fifteen minutes later, but the woman in the fight ended up having a bleeding cut on her head.

This robot is called HP RoboCop, operated by Knightscope, a firm known for its useless goofy security robots with accidents like falling into a fountain and clobbering a toddler. It’s basically a security robot with the word “Police” on its body. Typically, these robots work as mall cops.

In this situation, however, they are under a pilot program with a police department in California, US, which explains the word emblazoned on them.

And they are useless because their alert buttons connect to Knightscope instead of an actual police department. They record live video 24/7 but the police cannot really access that footage. In addition, they can only move on cement, meaning it’s not so mobile after all. All in all, the HP RoboCop can patrol a limited area only, it does not call for help, and its footage is not available to actual police.

If that’s not enough, each of these useless robots costs between Rs 42.7 lakh and Rs 49.8 lakh for lease each year, the same amount paid to a human cop that can do a lot more. Residents in the area did say that they feel safer having those robots patrolling, but they are really expensive considering their uselessness.

While we are seeing more robots with more capabilities, the cost to build and develop them is still too high compared with what they can actually do. And the HP RoboCop just poses another example, a troubling one though, as Knightscope last year announced a contest after the Parkland shooting. The idea was that the company would give the winning school a K5 patrol bot to better secure the area. As you see, that’s not a really good idea.