Hasta La Ideas

Photos via Getty, which may or may not be working with Google on a ‘special collection’ of robot images

The jury’s still out on the new remake of Robocop, which hit theaters yesterday, but it so happens that the stalwart police force of Kinshasa has had a couple of automata on duty for at least a few weeks now. The stationary ‘bots have been installed in a busy intersection in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital city as a pilot program to replace the all-too-fallible humans who take shifts directing traffic on the ostensibly chaotic streets of Africa’s third-largest city.

Designed by Isaie Therese of the Kinshasa Advanced Institute of Applied Techniques, the robots are essentially anthropomorphic semaphores (yeah, that term isn’t catching on any time soon) that look something like cousins of Chinese DIYer Wu Yulu’s homegrown mechas; in addition to the LED panels on each side of the solar-powered robots, they’re also equipped with traffic cameras and have reportedly been more issuing tickets to scofflaws. Although the upshot is twofold—increased compliance and revenue for the local DOT—others note that the tradeoff is that a mechanized approach to law enforcement may not account for exceptions, i.e. first responders in case of an accident.

Francophones can learn more in this this video; “le vert” and “passé facilement” are easy enough, but unfortunately my French is not nearly good enough to understand what they’re saying. Still, I was interested to hear the crossing-guard-o-tron’s matter-of-fact baritone at 2:48 and again at 4:20, though it’s not clear if they also pipe out muzak for pedestrians’ dubious enjoyment.

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