In China, robots developed by local technology firm SUPCON are participating in a pilot project to enforce traffic rules instead of police officers.
In China, robots developed by local technology firm SUPCON are participating in a pilot project to enforce traffic rules instead of police officers.
According to Reuters, the experiment is ongoing in the city of Hangzhou and a number of other localities.
The 98 kg, 1.88 m tall T2 robot uses cameras, radar and on-board computing to identify a range of violations — cyclists without helmets; e-bikes with passengers; vehicles stopping at markings and pedestrians crossing the road at a prohibited traffic light signal.
According to Cao Hui, head of SUPCON’s Intelligent Unmanned Systems Innovation Center, the robots can also answer questions about directions, parking, and traffic rules, and an emergency call function connects users with local police. At the same time, the robot’s hands reproduce standard traffic police gestures.
SUPCON has deployed 15 robots in Hangzhou since May. The company says they have issued more than 170,000 warnings to violators and have helped reduce the number of helmetless and stop-line violations by more than 40% each month. However, the robots do not yet have the authority to arrest violators or use any other enforcement methods.
According to a company spokesperson, the robots have been tested for thousands of hours, and the experiment showed that the operation of their cameras and radars can still be affected by strong sunlight, rain, and extreme temperatures, although SUPCON claims that the accuracy of detecting violations exceeds 95%.
A representative of the development company also added that the robots operate autonomously from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., moving between preset positions at intersections without remote control.
SUPCON claims that nearly 50 such robots are operating in about eight cities in three Chinese provinces, and there could be about 200 by the end of the year.
As dev.ua recently reported, another Chinese robot manufacturer, Unitree Robotics, debuted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. On the first day of trading, the company’s shares rose by 460%, and at one point were up more than 600%.
