Dubai To Deploy Autonomous Police Cars
The Dubai police force is adding another car to their fleet of amazing police vehicles, but this one will not be a supercar; at least not in the vein of Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
The O-R3 security robot designed by OTSAW Digital will be a fully driverless car that will patrol the city on its own and use biometric software to scan people that it comes across, hopefully identifying criminals and “undesirables.” The O-R3 will also be linked to an onboard drone that will allow the Dubai Police to perform aerial surveilance.
The O-R3 will be equipped with a laser scanner, thermal camera, HD cameras. GPS, and lidar, which it will use for navigation. These cameras can also be used for facial and license plate recognition.
The one aspect of this system that wasn’t made clear is exactly how the O-R3 will determine who is a criminal/undesirable and who is not. Obviously, there must be some combination of live humans on surveillance and the facial recognition, but I am curious if there is another part of the software that we don’t yet know about.
Either way, the Dubai Police are hoping that the mere presence of a fleet of O-R3s is enough to deter potential crimes from happening. Plans are to replace 25% of the police force with robots, which is something I would balk at if I were a Dubai police officer since they normally drive some pretty amazing cars on the job.
