War Protestor Robots for the G8 Summit

Posted 23 Jan 2006 at 04:10 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Don't want to be a war demonstrator for fear of getting hauled off by the police? Well, La Fabricadecosasbonitas (The Factory of Pretty Things) has been given a grant to make 20 Robot war demonstrators for the upcoming G8 summit, to be held in the summer of 2007 in Germany. The robot satirizes the terrible consequences of dehumanizing armed conflict. The ANA (Autonomous Non-violent Agent) Project recently won funding from Vida 8.0 to build the 20 robotic protestors. The prototype looks like a cheesy mannequin holding a war protestor sign. The bot will have a Segway type locomotion with sensors and a camera to help it navigate. The robot is more of a remote control avatar where the real protestor can hold a sign from over a mile away. Perhaps that will protect the real protestors from being hauled away by the police.

Cool idea, posted 23 Jan 2006 at 16:01 UTC by steve » (Master)

That's a pretty cool idea. I wonder what the legal implications are. Can the cops arrest a teleoperated robot? Or do they have to find and arrest the human operator? Hmmm... I noticed the site says the robots can operate autonomously too. Who do you arrest then? The programmer?

Are there any laws that would allow the cops to round up and remove the robots? I think some city ordinances in the US define private property (such as bicycles) left on public land as "abandoned" after a set amount of time, like 48 or 72 hours. I wonder if the protesters have checked out the laws in Germany? Heh, the way things have been going, we may soon need to build some protest bots here in the US.