Picture a typical playground. It's a sunny day and kids are playing tag, smacking tetherballs around and hanging off the monkey bars. Now imagine this: There's not a single parent or adult in sight, but a 3-foot, 260-pound robot on patrol instead.
Take a closer look and you'll see the children wearing small electronic devices, tiny radio transmitters that signal the bot when the kids wander out of safe range. Equipped with a camera, the robot relays live video to a remote security facility. When a stranger approaches one of the children, the robot, controlled remotely, gets aggressive. On six wheels, it pursues the intruder, flashing bright lights and sirens and spewing a thick cloud of smoke. The cyber-guard snaps a few pictures, too.
Sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but Secom, a security company in Japan, has already built such a machine, called
Robot X. The company rents the robotic security guard for $2,700 per month, according to reports, and recently introduced a version designed specifically to monitor schoolyards and send reports of children's whereabouts to parents' cell phones.
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News.com
Jul 8, 2005, 07:18 PM
