RoboDogs

Is the public ready for a RoboDog on the police force? New York City, Honolulu, and the Dutch national police force have tried a robotic police dog nicknamed Spot, created by Boston Dynamics:

Useful Hounds or Dehumanizing Machines?

In connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, these automatons have scanned people for fevers and conducted remote interviews with positive-testing patients. In Belgium, one was sent to check the site of a drug lab explosion. Utlity companies can use them "to inspect high-voltage zones and other hazardous areas." They can also "monitor construction sites, mines and factories, equipped with whatever sensor is needed for the job." A representative of the manufacturer points out, "The first value that most people see in the robot is taking a person out of a hazardous situation.” On the negative side, some critics worry about weaponization of robots, especially under the control of the police. Another company, Ghost Robotics, has no qualms about providing similar robot dogs to the military. While Boston Dynamics tries to promote its product as friendly and helpful, some people worry about the potential for "killer robots" employed by police departments. The issue of human rights with regard to robot police dogs brings to mind Asimov's robot stories, with the Three Laws to limit the potential for harm, as well as governmental hyper-caution demonstrated by a prohibition against deploying robots on Earth.

An article exploring why Spot, renamed Digidog in New York, didn't work out well there:

The NYPD's Robot Dog

The design of the "dog," with its "very imposing profile," the way it moves, and the context of its use influenced the public's response to it. At a time when police departments were facing increased criticism about officers' interactions with civilians, Digidog was taken into a public housing project, where it exacerbated the "very big power imbalance that’s already there." It's proposed that the reaction to Digidog might have been more positive if people had seen it used for jobs such as bomb disposal or rescuing victims from fires. Also, science fiction has created stereotypical expectations of what robots are and how they function, ideas both positive and negative.

I find these machines a little disappointing because they don't live up to my idea of a true robot. The animatronic hounds can't act on their own. At most, when ordered to move in a particular direction, they can navigate stairs or rough terrain without being micromanaged. Spot can act autonomously "only if it’s already memorized an assigned route and there aren’t too many surprise obstacles," a long way from science-fiction robots that can receive broad commands and carry out all the necessary steps without further guidance. Also, the robot "hounds" don't look much like real dogs. Why weren't they given a canine appearance, with fur as well as other animal-like features? Wouldn't people accept them more readily if they were cute? Maybe, as hinted in the article linked above, that was part of the problem with their failure in New York. Surely they could be made more pet-like without falling into the uncanny valley of "too" realistic.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt