Singapore to Trial Pepper-Spray Robots in Three Prisons

SINGAPORE — Starting October, two Singapore Prison Service prisons will be piloting 3-month-long programmes where they use robots equipped with pepper spray to investigate how well machines will react to prisoner standoffs, thereby reducing officers' exposure to conflict.  
 
Developed together with Home Team Science and Technology Agency, PROTECT (or Prisons Robot To Eradicate Conflicts And Threats) is currently in prototype. The distinction between autonomous patrol and autonomous intervention is central to the project. SPS says the robot remains under development and cannot independently detect incidents and act on them.  The robot, which stands 157cm tall and weighs 510kg, is programmed to patrol specific locations, using its AI to identify individuals and navigate around objects while officers use its video and sound feeds to monitor everything remotely.  
 
 If a conflict takes place, officers can manually control the machine, issue warnings and trigger the pepper spray; allowing staff to commence intervention without needing to be physically present at the scene. According to published specifications of the machine's functions, PROTECT can alert prison authorities when tamper attempts have been detected.  
 
 A survey by CNA confirms that the robots will function primarily for inmates' supervision, surveillance and event management purposes and aims at delivering swifter, safer and more effective intervention, although tests have yet to confirm the robots have yielded such results in day-to-day functions.  
 
 The project builds on earlier efforts to reduce the time officers spend watching inmates and camera feeds. In a previous GovInsider interview, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs described smart cameras and video analytics used to help identify fights and medical emergencies.  
 
 Officers, who traditionally attend to prisoners for rehabilitations work that need direct attention, now have mobile platforms from where to watch incidents and respond with their intervention.  
 
 The SPS says, these proposed measures are but experimental, and it will only after the completion of these trials that we may be able to determine how they perform in a real-life scenario and prove their benefits in helping with public safety.