Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The man pictured above is Rufus Terrill, who owns a bar called "O'Terrill's" in Atlanta. That thing is a robot he built to fend off the various vagrants, thugs, drug dealers, and other such miscreants who terrorize his bar.

No, seriously.

He mounted an old meat smoker atop a three-wheel scooter and attached a spotlight, an infrared camera, water cannon and a loudspeaker. He covered the contraption with impact-resistant rubber and painted the whole thing jet black.

...

He flashes the robot's spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot's sound system.

"I tell them they are trespassing, it's private property, and they have to leave," he said. "They throw bottles and cans at it. That's when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches."

This all sounds really amazing, but what happens when the criminals just become more persistent and he has to build a bigger robot. And then the crooks outsmart that robot, so he has to build one with artificial intelligence? What happens then?