Robot Dogs Are Now Being Used In Singapore Parks To Remind People To Practice Social Distancing
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Far from barking its orders, a robot dog enlisted by Singapore authorities to help curb coronavirus infections in the city-state politely asks joggers and cyclists to stay apart.
The remote-controlled, four-legged machine built by Boston Dynamics was first deployed in a central park on Friday as part of a two-week trial that could see it join other robots policing Singapore’s green spaces during a nationwide lockdown.
Not too long ago we saw the emergence of literal robocops in Tunisia making sure people were following lockdown procedures. Now, we have fucking robodogs reminding everyone to social distance. I will say though, I'd much rather have a lil robopooch walk up to me and tell me what's what rather than those robocops in Tunisia. With a name like SPOT, how can you hate on this dog. The robots in Tunisia - seemed like more of an RC car than an actual robot - came up and interrogated you meanwhile the dog just appears to walk around repeating the same thing over and over.
While I thoroughly enjoy the idea of a robodog walking around giving people the business, is it really necessary? If people are out there not practicing social distancing, they're doing it on their own accord, not because they forgot. I mean, how could they possibly forget? It's kind of all anyone is talking about these days, even months.
Albeit for a good reason but if people still need to be told to social distance, they were either living under a rock for the past 2-3 months or they simply don't give a fuck. I'm a giant pussy so naturally, I tend to lean towards social distancing with no real prior knowledge but I know for a fact there are people out there not social standing just to prove some kind of a point. I'm not exactly sure what that point may be other than the sole purpose of being difficult but what do I know.
I wonder if this dog actually does anything when it finds violators of social distancing. I know that it just kind of repeats the message but does it actually enforce anything? I'm not really sure I'd wanna be the one to find out, that's a very slippery slope. One second you're walking in the park with a group of 6 friends that are all standing on top of each other, next thing ya know you've been reduced to a fine gloop by this dog. All because you couldn't stand not seeing your friends in real life. Maybe SPOT just follows violators around, yelling at you to social distance until you actually did it.
The only real problem I have with SPOT is that he is far too easy to steal. Somebody could easily just run up on this thing and pick it up like it was a goddamn scoop n score opportunity. I'm sure the Singapore government has all sorts of crazy tracking on this thing but that could be too little too late. For all we know some sort of supervillain could come along and transform this thing into some sort of murder machine. At least the robocops in Tunisia couldn't be burglarized.
So yeah, why not just have a robot dog patrol the parks, it's not really causing harm or anything. It just kinda walks around and tells people to stay a meter apart. No violence, no threats.