Massachusetts State Police have become the first law enforcement agency to make use of Spot, a dog-life robot made by Boston Dynamics, which joined the state’s bomb squad from August until November, WBUR reports.
According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and a spokesperson for the state police, Spot was being used as a “mobile remote observation device,” which allowed law enforcement to view potentially dangerous situations without risking themselves.
“Right now, our primary interest is sending the robot into situations where you want to collect information in an environment where it's too dangerous to send a person, but not actually physically interacting with the space,” Boston Dynamics vice president for business development Michael Perry said.
Spot is a “general purpose” robot, according to the company, meaning its software can be modified by the customer to be used in a variety of ways, though the state police said they did not make use of this.
“Part of our early evaluation process with customers is making sure that we're on the same page for the usage of the robot,” Perry said. “So upfront, we're very clear with our customers that we don't want the robot being used in a way that can physically harm somebody.”
Some civil rights advocates, like Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ technology for liberty program, have expressed concern about a lack of policy on how state police use robotics.
“We just really don't know enough about how the state police are using this,” Crockford told WBUR. “And the technology that can be used in concert with a robotic system like this is almost limitless in terms of what kinds of surveillance and potentially even weaponization operations may be allowed.”
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