South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has announced that it is testing robotguards in prisons. The one-month trial will be conducted at a prison in thecity of Pohang, located southeast of capital Seoul, starting March 2012. Theproject is expected to cost one billion won (about $ 863,000).
The robot guards are designed to patrol prison corridors and monitorconditions inside the cells. If the robots detect signs of sudden or unusualactivity, they alert the human guards. The robots also function ascommunication channels when prisoners want to contact guards in an emergencysituation.
“The robots are programmed to analyze various activities of those in prisonand identify abnormal behavior,” Professor Lee Baik-chul of Kyonggi University,who is in charge of the project, said in an interview with Wall StreetJournal.
The human wardens, according to Lee, have welcomed the idea since the robotscan reduce the workload especially at night. However, these robot guards cannotcrack down on prisoners in the event of a riot.
The project team is putting final touches to the robots to make them appearmore “humane and friendly” to the inmates.
Source: WallStreet Journal, via Engadget Technology Gadgets – GuideTo.Com