Knock Knock: Dallas Police Used Robot With Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect
Posted: July 8, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Guns and Gadgets, Robotics | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Computer program, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mike Rawlings, Police officer, Robot, Robotics Leave a commentErik Ortiz reports: Police in Dallas used a robot with an explosive device to kill a suspect involved in a coordinated ambush against officers.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger.”
— Mayor Mike Rawlings
The suspect was holed up inside the El Centro College parking garage for several hours overnight Thursday before police moved to “blast him out,” Mayor Mike Rawlings said Friday. The negotiations with the unidentified suspect had stalled.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,” Rawlings told reporters. “Other options would have exposed our officers in grave danger.”
The mayor said the suspect was killed by the device, and disputed earlier reports that he might have shot himself.
At least three other suspects were involved in the attack on officers during a protest Thursday night about police-involved shootings elsewhere in the country. Five officers were killed and seven others were injured, as well as two civilians.
Typically, police forces have bomb squads that employ remote-controlled robots for dismantling explosive devices.
But using robots with explosives or munitions to root out or even kill suspects appears far less routine…(more)
Source: NBC News
The first suspect in the Dallas police shooting was identified as Micah X. Johnson, 25, the Los Angeles Times reported. Johnson was a resident of the Dallas area who had no ties to terror groups or a criminal history. Law enforcement said he has relatives in Mesquite, Texas.
Five police officers were killed late Thursday by shooters during a peaceful protest over the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile earlier this week. Dallas Police Chief David Brown said negotiations with one suspect broke down early Friday and a bomb robot was used to kill the suspect. Read the rest of this entry »
James R. Hagerty: Meet the New Generation of Robots for Manufacturing
Posted: June 3, 2015 Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Beijing, Boston Consulting Group, China, EgyptAir, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hong Kong, Industrial robot, International Air Transport Association, Kevin Andrews (Australian politician), Maritime patrol, National Review, Robot, Royal Air Maroc, Singapore, South African Airways, The Wall Street Journal Leave a comment
They are nimbler, lighter and work better with humans. They might even help bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
Robots deployed in manufacturing today tend to be large, dangerous to anyone who strays too close to their whirling arms, and limited to one task, like welding, painting or hoisting heavy parts.
“Robots are going to change the economic calculus for manufacturing. People will spend less time chasing low-cost labor.”
— Hal Sirkin, a Chicago-based senior partner of Boston Consulting Group
The latest models entering factories and being developed in labs are a different breed. They can work alongside humans without endangering them and help assemble all sorts of objects, as large as aircraft engines and as small and delicate as smartphones. Soon, some should be easy enough to program and deploy that they no longer will need expert overseers.
“Researchers hope robots will become so easy to set up and move around that they can reduce the need for companies to make heavy investments in tools and structures that are bolted to the floor.”
That will change not only the way an increasing number of products are made. It could also mean an upheaval in the competition between companies and nations. As robots become less costly and more accessible, they should help smaller manufacturers go toe to toe with giants. By reducing labor costs, they also may allow the U.S. and other high-wage countries to get back into some of the processes that have been ceded to China, Mexico and other countries with vast armies of lower-paid workers.
“That would allow manufacturers to make shorter runs of niche or custom products without having to spend lots of time and money reconfiguring factories.”
Some of the latest robots are designed specifically for the tricky job of assembling consumer-electronics items, now mostly done by hand in Asia. At least one company promises its robots eventually will be sewing garments in the U.S., taking over one of the ultimate sweatshop tasks.

“Robots are going to change the economic calculus for manufacturing,” says Hal Sirkin, a Chicago-based senior partner of Boston Consulting Group. “People will spend less time chasing low-cost labor.”
The changing face
Today, industrial robots are most common in auto plants—which have long been the biggest users of robot technology—and they do jobs that don’t take much delicacy: heavy lifting, welding, applying glue and painting. People still do most of the final assembly of cars, especially when it involves small parts or wiring that needs to be guided into place.
[Read the full text here, at WSJ]
Now robots are taking on some jobs that require more agility. At a Renault SA plant in Cleon, France, robots made by Universal Robots AS of Denmark drive screws into engines, especially those that go into places people find hard to get at. The robots employ a reach of more than 50 inches and six rotating joints to do the work. They also verify that parts are properly fastened and check to make sure the correct part is being used.

At a Renault car plant, robots drive screws into engines—a sign of their progress in handling small parts. Photo: Renault
The Renault effort demonstrates a couple of trends that are drastically changing how robots are made. For one, they’re getting much lighter. The Renault units weigh only about 64 pounds, so “we can easily remove them and reinstall them in another place,” says Dominique Graille, a manager at Renault, which is using 15 robots from Universal now and plans to double that by year-end. Read the rest of this entry »
Industrial Robotics: Why China May Have the Most Factory Robots in the World by 2017
Posted: April 2, 2015 Filed under: Asia, China, Robotics | Tags: ABB Group, Artificial Intelligence, Baxter (robot), Carnegie Mellon University, Economic growth, Georgia Institute of Technology, Industrial robot, International Federation of Robotics, Manufacturing, Rethink Robotics, Robot, Scott Eckert Leave a commentA perfect storm of economic forces is fueling the trend
Timothy Aeppel reports: Having devoured many of the world’s factory jobs, China is now handing them over to robots.
China is already the world’s largest market for industrial robots—sales of the machines last year grew 54% from 2013. The nation is expected to have more factory robots than any other country on earth by 2017, according to the German-based International Federation of Robotics.
A perfect storm of economic forces is fueling the trend. Chinese labor costs have soared, undermining the calculus that brought all those jobs to China in the first place, and new robot technology is cheaper and easier to deploy than ever before.
Not to mention that many of China’s fastest-growing industries, such as autos, tend to rely on high levels of automation regardless of where the factories are built.
“We think of them producing cheap widgets,” but that’s not what they’re focused on, says Adams Nager, an economic research analyst at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation in Washington. Mr. Nager says China is letting low-cost production shift out of the country and is focusing instead on capital-intensive industries such as steel and electronics where automation is a driving force.
China’s emergence as an automation hub contradicts many assumptions about robots. Read the rest of this entry »
Domestic Terror U.S.A.: Georgia Tech Student Burned by Molotov Cocktail
Posted: February 28, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, U.S. News | Tags: Atlanta, Atlanta Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Institute of Technology, Grady Memorial Hospital, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Molotov cocktail, Piedmont Park 1 CommentThe FBI says a Georgia Tech graduate student was burned by a Molotov cocktail at his apartment in the 200 block of 10th Street, not far from Piedmont Park.
Atlanta police spokeswoman Kim Jones said Saamer Akhshabi suffered third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body. Lighter fluid and a charred pillow and mattress were found inside the apartment, along with the Molotov cocktail and several plastic bottles filled with gasoline and kerosene.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, along with the Atlanta Police Department and Atlanta Fire-Rescue are working to investigate the circumstances behind the incident. Homeland Security was also notified of the explosion.