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Robart III rent-a-cop drone

Robart III

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.