Next time you travel to Dubai, don't be surprised if you see little Power Wheels sized Police patrol cars cruising around. That's right, the Dubai Police department just signed a contract with Singapore based OTSAW Digital to purchase their latest Robot police car named the O-R3.
This little guy may not look very tough, but don't be fooled. If you are in the system, you better believe it's looking at you. Equipped with facial recognition systems, the robot can scan faces, identify suspicious items, follow threats and even deploy a police officer controlled drone to chase suspects down if they so choose to run.
The O-R3 is set to begin its official patrol at the end of 2017, making Dubai the first city to launch a robot police force. Their ultimate goal is to have 25% of the police force replaced with robots by 2030. CEO Ling Bing said this according to gulfnews.com:
"Ultimately, robots exist to improve the quality of human lives, where men take on high-value jobs while robots perform the low-skilled ones."
This news is coming out shortly after Dubai announced it will start trials of a flying taxi service in 2020.
No telling if and when cities here in the U.S may adopt a semi Robot police force, but if police robots are anything like cars, it's best we avoid the first few model years while Dubai works out all the bugs for us.