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Killer Robots

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New Drone Shoots Protesters With Pepper Spray Paintballs. By Throngs of protesters and activists could soon find themselves choking on a pepper spray, even without any police officer having to step foot near them.

New Drone Shoots Protesters With Pepper Spray Paintballs

A new drone that shoots protesters with paintballs filled with pepper spray has debuted. Now, protesters can come under attack from riot control drones outfitted with custom made paintball guns, as well as strobe lights to distract crowds and speakers for police to issue demands at the choking crowds of dissidents. Meet the Skunk Riot Control Copter, a new drone marketed towards the military and law enforcement, built by South African company Desert Wolf. If you’re curious about the company’s roots in South Africa, it is no coincidence: the folks working for Desert Wolf have come straight out of the former regime’s efforts to squash the anti-apartheid movement.

The Riot Control Copter has a suite of cameras equipped, along with four paintball guns mounted on its chassis. The 'Killer Robot' Olympics. Big Pharma’s focus on blockbuster cancer drugs squeezes out cheaper treatments.

The 'Killer Robot' Olympics

The result, one researcher says: ‘If we’re winning the war on cancer, we’re not winning that fast.’ Michael Retsky awoke from surgery to bad news. The tumor in his colon had spread to four of his lymph nodes and penetrated the bowel wall. When Retsky showed the pathology report to William Hrushesky, his treating oncologist, the doctor exclaimed, “Mamma mia.” “Michael had a mean-looking cancer,” Hrushesky remembers. Retsky didn’t need anyone to tell him his prognosis. In the absence of chemotherapy, there was an 80 percent chance of relapse. Like many cancer patients, Retsky didn’t much like the odds. Seventeen years later and cancer-free, Retsky cannot be entirely sure the treatment cured him, but he believes it likely did. Take Michelle Holmes, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The newer drugs have in some cases shown dramatic life-extending results for patients. This crime-predicting robot aims to patrol our streets by 2015.

A scene in the 2004 film "I, Robot" involves an army of rogue NS-5 humanoids establishing a curfew and imprisoning the citizens of Chicago, circa 2035, inside their homes.

This crime-predicting robot aims to patrol our streets by 2015

That's not how Knightscope envisions the coming day of deputized bots. In its far less frightful future, friendly R2-D2 lookalikes patrol our streets, school hallways, and company campuses to keep us safe and put real-time data to good use. Instead of the Asimov-inspired NS-5, Knightscope, a Silicon Valley-based robotics company, is developing the K5. Officially dubbed the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, the 300-pound, 5-foot-tall mobile robot will be equipped with nighttime video cameras, thermal imaging capabilities, and license plate recognition skills.

Robot Targets Jellyfish And Shreds Them. South Korean civil and environmental engineers are fine-tuning a robotic swarm that has one purpose: destroy jellyfish.

Robot Targets Jellyfish And Shreds Them

The shredding mechanism might strike some as extreme, but jellyfish are a deadly threat to humans. Anything You Can Do, Robots Can Do Better: Photos The system is called the Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm or JEROS for short and was developed at the South Korean research university KAIST. Associate robotics professor Myung Hyun began working on an unmanned jellyfish removal system three years ago, motivated by jellyfish attacks along the country’s southwest coast. Jellyfish have also caused enormous losses in the local fishing industry, where they clog nets, feed on fish eggs and consume the plankton that fish normally eat. Suicide Drones Blow Up With Their Target. Killer drones are getting lighter, smaller and cheaper in order to keep their place on the battlefield as defense budgets are cut and as the U.S. military pulls out of Afghanistan.

Suicide Drones Blow Up With Their Target

The latest twist: “kamikaze” drones that blow up along with their intended target. Two devices were on display at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) trade show in Washington, DC, this week: Textron System’s Battlehawk and Aerovironment’s Switchblade. Both are hand-launched devices that can be carried in a small backpack. Photos: Anything You Can Do, Robots Can Do Better The Battlehawk is made of carbon-fiber wings that curl up into a 22-inch tube launcher. 'Killer robots' pose threat to peace and should be banned, UN warned. Science fiction?

'Killer robots' pose threat to peace and should be banned, UN warned

'Machines lack morality and mortality, and should not have life and death powers over humans', Heyns will say on Thursday. Photograph: Warner Bros "Killer robots" that could attack targets autonomously without a human pulling the trigger pose a threat to international stability and should be banned before they come into existence, the United Nations will be told by its human rights investigator this week. Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, will address the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday and call for a worldwide moratorium on what he calls "lethal autonomous robotics" – weapons systems that, once activated, can lock on and kill targets without further involvement of human handlers.

"Machines lack morality and mortality, and as a result should not have life and death powers over humans," Heyns will say. India developing robotic soldiers to replace humans in warfare.