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As the amount of high-tech police gear skyrockets across North America and much of Europe, one company isn’t betting on robo-dogs or egg-shaped sentry-bots.
Instead, Estonian-based startup Rollo Robotics came up with a roving sentinel in the shape of a juicy rubber kickball, dubbed 1Rollo, as New Atlas reports — and we can’t shake the feeling that it’s the perfect form factor to be vandalized by angry locals who don’t want to be spied on.
With protestors across Europe and the US cutting down or disabling AI-integrated police surveillance cameras and vandalizing camera drones, it remains to be seen whether the police gadgets see live deployment on city streets — and if so, how long they last before somebody sends one to the Moon with a swift kick.
The bot sports an AI-integrated 360-degree camera antenna with a wireless transmitter, though the bulk of its body is made up of a stable mono wheel measuring two feet in diameter.
According to the company’s website, 1Rollo represents the “world’s first mono wheel robot,” boasting “gyroscope-based stabilization” and rugged weatherproofing to survive Estonia’s extreme winters. It stands about 3.5 feet in height and can supposedly wheel around at a speed of up to 19 miles per hour.
Like most companies that use “AI” as a marketing gimmick, Rollo Robotics is keen to stress the cost-savings you could achieve by replacing humans with its products.
“Human patrol is expensive, inefficient, and now replaceable,” the company’s website declares. It goes on to note that there are 28.5 million frontline security workers around the world, and that the 1Rollo could offer “labor cost reduction” of over 80 percent.
But how many kickbots does it take to do the job of a human security team? According to the company, it takesthree bots for every nine humans — one robot per 24-hour shift. (The implication here being that the 1Rollo can operate around the clock, though its eight-hour battery life might put a damper on that ambitious goal.)
Considering its perfectly round shape makes it particularly suitable for a punt — not that we would condone such behavior — we have our doubts about its long-term effectiveness as a one-wheeled surveillance machine.
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