Robart III rent-a-cop drone

We're used to seeing unintentionally creepy robots, but not quite so often do we witness drones that are supposedly intentionally scary but ultimately laughable. The Robart III is a mechanical rent-a-cop replacement currently in prototype from the U.S. military's Space and Naval Warfare Systems. It detects intruders and caps 'em with a six-barrel Gatling-style tranquilizer (or rubber bullets, if that's your pleasure) gun. It uses head-mounted sensors of several varieties: two Polaroid sonar transducers, a Banner near-infrared proximity sensor, an AM Sensors microwave motion detector, topped off with a video surveillance camera. All this sex-appeal may backfire for the Robart III, who ends up looking like some comical mixture of a Dalek and Johnny Five. Robart III apparently has some new developers coming on board who want to develop a whole fleet of slave robots to accompany Robart III on its missions. We figure this troupe will either nab a bunch of bad guys, or perhaps end up with a starring role in the next Austin Powers movie.

[coward @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

Buy one and name him 'Jason'. Then he'd be 'Jason Robart'. Wonder if he'll do film?

[Oddjob @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

This guy reminds me of the Nintendo Entertainment System's R.O.B.:

http://www.nesplayer.com/database/accessories/rob.htm

[strider_mt2k @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

Robart has grown a bit, but is still pretty scary.
Scary cool that is. Gimme a bot with a gatling gun any old day.

The basic platform has been around for at least a couple of years now. It's good to see the design is flexible enough to allow the additional hardware it's aquired.

[Palehorse @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

"Sarah Connor?"