NYPD Unleashes Two New Robo-Dogs to Fight City’s War on Crime

By Yehudit Garmaise

“Diggity Dog is out of the pound,” said Mayor Eric Adams last week in Times Square, when the NYPD unleashed the department’s newest development in police technology: robotic dogs.

The two first two remote-controlled robotic dogs, which cost $750,000, will not be used to patrol neighborhoods, but the futuristic-looking white pooches will help out with “hostage situations, bomb threats, counter-terrorism, and other situations, said NYPD Chief of Patrol Jeffrey Maddrey.

To patrol and surveil its surroundings, the NYPD also showcased EK5, a white, human-sized rocket-shaped fully autonomous police robot with cameras, an emergency help button, and the ability to transmit real-time data to deter break-ins and vandalism.

The white, wheeled bots were first deployed in test cases to spy on the streets in Silicon Valley, Calif., where the robo-cops were “mostly been met with mocking suspicion and drunken violence,” reported Wired, which predicted many New Yorkers likely wouldn’t warmly welcome the robotic cops standing watch on the city’s streets.

To avoid dangerous high-speed chases, NYPD also showcased GPS tags that will attach to cars after cops shoot the high-tech devices to better pursue and find assailants fleeing by car.

While some New Yorkers applaud any efforts the Adams administration launches to fight the city’s war on crime, other residents worry about the dangers of the robo-dogs and other automated devices.

“What if all these [devices] turn on us?” one worried New Yorker asked ABC7 News.

One New Yorker we asked worried about “a world given over to the hands of robots," but he did not object to NYPD officers using robot dogs to assist them.

“If they use the robo-dogs to detect bombs and possibly save lives, then why not?” he said.

Photo credit: Flickr