A lot of people are worried about robots taking their jobs. Workers at Chipotle who mix up batches of guacamole may soon be replaced by what the chain is calling an “Autocado,” a robot specifically made to prepare the Mexican spread.
But what about your freedom? Would you give it up to a robot? One man in Texas didn’t have much choice after he was what you might call smoked out of his hotel room by a robot run by the police.
Felix Delarosa, 39, was hiding out from an arrest warrant in a Days Inn location in Lubbock, Texas recently. He was in no mood to parley with the police. When cops showed up, he allegedly shot at them. No amount of negotiations by phone could convince Delarosa to give himself up, so the police reached for a tool they don’t often use with humans: the Lubbock Regional Bomb Squad Robot.
The device doesn’t look humanoid, but it is reminiscent of some of the “droids” from Star Wars. The robot locomotes using tracks like a bulldozer, and has articulated appendages usually employed to either defuse or set off a bomb, keeping humans at a safe distance.
Delarosa was so agitated that he would not stop firing on the cops from his motel room, so a police sniper finally had to shoot the man. It was then that the robot rolled in. Local news footage captured the device moving toward the man, who threw a blanket over it, apparently in an attempt to stop it from sensing where it was.
Undeterred, the rolling bot then moved to the window of the room and parted the curtains to get a good clear line of sight to spray tear gas at the suspect. That did the trick, and the robot can be seen climbing on top of Delarosa as the cops move in to arrest him. He was taken to the hospital to be treated for the gunshot wound, and the officer who shot him was placed on routine administrative leave pending an investigation by the Texas Rangers.
Not every deployment of a robot for police work has gone so smoothly. Major public outcry against the creepy dog-like robots used by the New York Police Department persuaded the city to suspend the use of the devices, but they’re set to come back according to Mayor Eric Adams.
