Robocop Possible Or Not?

That rugged toy figure we all had as kids, the one where a button would light up his red visors, I used to carry it everywhere as an interpretation of my profound love for that thing; my vision still blurs as I picture my very first RoboCop. I guess I wanted to start on a familiar note; I mean we all grew up drenched in the sheer awesomeness of the 'oh-so-cool' RoboCop, daydreaming throughout the years about one that would appear in real life. Well, I'm here to tell you that that day is closer than you may realize.
Florida International University's 'Discovery Lab' is working on a 'real-life' RoboCop which, as opposed to the non-existent one, depicted in the movie of 1987 by Paul Verhoeven, is actually quite manageable with today's technology and resources. Of course, it's not as 'badass' as you'd imagine, but I think the cause behind this effort is much cooler than that. You see, this is being developed so that one day in future, a disabled officer may still be able to perform the duties of a cop through their robotic form.
So how would this work anyway? While the actual mechanics behind this is far too complicated for us to comprehend, I will try to describe it in the simplest way possible. The 'Telebot', as they call it, is a 75-pound proto-type that is trying to master the combination of telepresence and robotics in order to attain the ultimate purpose; amazingly, this was made completely from scratch. It uses an 'Oculus Rift' headset, a motion-tracking vest, arm bands and gloves; these are meant to be worn by the officer in question completely remote from the actual robot. As you might have guessed, the headset is used to see the robot's field of vision while the vest lets the robot imitate the person's movements and the gloves also do the same with the help of 'motion-sensing'.
I don't want to mislead you; this initiative will still take years to actually produce a feasible robotic form let alone the walking, talking, crime-fighting Robocop from our favourite movie. Unfortunately, our world does not consist of the kind of battery power that a full grown robotic cop would require; at least, with not that many moving parts. Think of it this way, our precious smart phones don't last us more than a day. The 'big boss' Tesla Model S can only last 300 miles before it needs to be plugged in for charging and even if we considered that distance to be enough, it's just too heavy at an unbearable 1300 pounds.
Charles Higgins, an electrical engineer and professor of neuroscience at the University of Arizona has said:
“That's one serious limitation that our technology is not approaching yet. In order to do a real RoboCop like you see in the movie, you need to have a very compact power source that's going to power all those motors all day—it doesn't look like RoboCop has to plug in every hour.”
That being said, Sci-fi movies whose main ingredient is a bunch of robots are now becoming surprisingly realistic. These comments, while unquestionably debatable, are interesting to say the least and give us all a sense of hope for brilliant forms of futuristic technology.
“Why creating a RoboCop is not that wild a thought”
1. Firstly, the production designer of RoboCop (2014) Martin Whist used 'graphene' for RoboCop's armor instead of different metal plates because it's 200 times stronger and 6 times lighter than steel; makes sense right? But you'll be even happier to know that in the real world graphene is being produced, be it in small batches, and companies like Samsung are trying to come up with ways to produce this material more efficiently.
2. In the same movie, RoboCop can identify faces in the blink of an eye. To those of you who are from this planet, we know that this idea isn't anything new; in fact, it is very much possible. The FBI already uses the kind of technology that can almost accurately, 80% to be exact, match faces with mug shots. Moreover, algorithms that can identify faces in videos are also being developed. Therefore, it shouldn't be too long before RoboCop's all seeing vision becomes an everyday feat.
3. The next piece of tech may be the coolest and perhaps at some point the most morally questionable one: 'drone control'. We are all aware that this idea is being wrongfully exploited already but the point here is that if this already exists then taking it to greater heights should not sound crazy at all.
4. 'Medical mumbo jumbo' as I would say, disagrees with some facts about RoboCop. But to make things seem more practical in the movie it is shown that, in order to avoid infections, between shifts RoboCop enters a full-body docking station, which protects his brain, lungs, and other surviving biological bits by performing a complete blood transfusion.
While we're still lost in thought about the future, an important development is being made on another robotic form called the K5 by Knightscope. It looks insanely similar to that droid r2d2 character, so all you Star Wars fans out there should be jumping right about now because this might as well be the future of law enforcement in our world. Shaped like a bullet, it is 5 feet tall and right around the corner.
I guess when our elders say, and I quote, 'the world is getting smaller' they are really referring to the massive leaps in technology they have been around to see. Honestly, those who see the bigger picture are actually the most ordinary people living life in the most ordinary ways; and on that note, I want to mention that this attempt on 'Telebot' was made possible thanks to the very real Jeremy Robins, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, who donated $20,000 towards the project to help his disabled veteran friends get back into the work force. Now him and all those 'Alex Murphy's that live to protect us are the ones I'd salute to; our 'real life' RoboCops
Comments