Chinese robocop can boost police patrol resources tenfold, study finds
- Beijing gauges demand for AI-powered machines that can identify and follow suspects, raise a fire alarm and detect unlawful gatherings
- Paper comes after law researcher warned police robots are not covered by Chinese law and overreliance could lead to public ‘crisis of trust and rights’
Robots could boost the power of Chinese police patrols tenfold, the country’s top police academy has found, in a study that has implications for how law enforcement and tech could collaborate in China.
Although the estimate was based on field data collected in Hangzhou, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, law enforcement elsewhere can benefit significantly from the technology, according to the police study.
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The research emerges after an earlier warning that a lack of regulation around the technology and worship of tech over human policing could risk damaging trust in law enforcement officers and alienating the public from police.
The new study, led by professor Li Weiqing of the People’s Public Security University of China, found that new technologies – including 5G, large data centres and high-precision satellite positioning – have significantly increased the real-world performance of robotic cops and paved the way for massive use of the technology.
China has 1.8 million police officers, twice as many as in the United States, and on average, more than one Chinese police officer dies on the job each day – three times as many as their American counterparts, according to Li’s team.