Robot Police!

Well, rent-a-cops anyway.  According to this article on LiveScience, a Japanese company has developed a robotic cop that can be controlled by cell phone (or presumably from a security office – you know, the kind with all the tvs showing feeds from security cameras).  These are being designed specifically for corporate use, to replace human guards, but the company plans to build home security robots as well.  I guess the idea is to avoid risking human beings, since the human controller (the guy with the cell phone) could stay safely in the guard shack while the robot shoots a net over the bad guy.

But wait…weren’t there some science fiction books written about this too?  Something about robots being used for various human functions and developing intelligence and taking over…or marginalizing human beings and creating a dystopia…I’m sure there were.