Singapore robot is set to shame badly parked bikes!
Singapore is waging war on illegal parking (among other things) with robots set to bring order to the streets
IMAGINE the scene: three young motorcyclists have pulled up and parked on the pavement for a drink at a back street café. Trouble is, these punks didn’t realise they’d strayed onto the wrong patch, and they are about to get a pasting from *checks press release* Xavier…
I mean, have the people who built this thing never seen a sci-fi movie? You give your edgy law-maker a name that makes it sound like one of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's kids! call it PC Buzzsaw or something like that! And then there is the design of the thing. The thing looks like the lovechild of quad bike and a bloody dishwasher!
Xavier is a four-wheeled box that features a touchscreen on the front and radar sensors and cameras on the top. The cameras can relay 360° images to a command centre and is also able to automatically alert the rozzers to a number of infringements. And it’s not just illegally parked motorcycles that this crime-fighting lump of wheeled white goods is trained to spot. Any undesirable and anti-social behaviour is this little robot’s specialist subject. That means peddlers, gatherings of five or more people, and even smokers need to beware.
For now, the four-wheeled crime fighter is just a test, although should the trial go well, it could become a regular feature on the mean streets of Singapore.
So, there we have it. Xavier the robot cop is here, and nothing can stop it – apart from stairs, kerbs, long grass, and being toppled over.
Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
