How a Robot Can Save The President & a VW Beetle
How exactly can a robot negotiate with a madman who has threatened President Obama and an innocent VW New Beetle? A chase in Los Angeles yesterday ended outside the Federal Building, where police, Secret Service and hightech robots blocked a man in a Volkswagen Beetle who made threats to both the VA Building and The White House.
“The LAPD bomb squad is using a remote-controlled robot to coax the suspect out of his Volkswagen beetle. This device is operated by a human, and is not autonomous — sort of a humanoid drone, a machine proxy for a human negotiator…At least four police cruisers blocked the red Volkswagen Beetle in the driveway of a parking lot on Veteran Avenue just south of Wilshire Boulevard. Officers stood nearby with their guns pointed at the vehicle, and a police robot wheeled its way next to the driver’s side door as the standoff continued. A military-style armored vehicle was also brought to the scene and was parked near the vehicle.” – According to BoingBoing.
According to an anonymous source: That particular piece of equipment is a Remotec (a subsidiary of Northrop-Grumman) model F-6A by the looks of it. It has 3 cameras, a microphone and a speaker. It can be operated remotely by a fiber optic tether or by radio waves. It is used by Law enforcement and the Military typically in bomb disposal operations. The use in hostage situations is not unprecedented however.
Good old fashion teargas put an end to this standoff – and the authorities identified the man as a 56-year-old from Westchester. His mother told the local papers he suffers from depression. The LAPD went to the man’s home in that area to search for bomb-making equipment but apparently didn’t find any.
Obviously this was not a legitimate beetle owner. Proper beetle owners would never have done such a thing.