Robocop Now in Beta: "If you're in New York City when the Republican National Conventions kicks off next week, watch for police officers watching you with extra sets of megapixel peepers. The Federal Protective Service has outfitted patrol officers with helmets embedded with wireless video cameras. The images from the helmet-cams and traditional surveillance cameras mounted in federal buildings are streamed to a headquarters-on-wheels where deployment decisions can be made. ..

The wearable component of the Federal Protective Service's system is more akin to two projects in development at UC Berkeley. As reported on TheFeature earlier this year, smart firefighter helmets will provide emergency personnel with an "augmented reality" display that overlays text and images onto their view through the helmet. Meanwhile, command and control officers can help guide the rescue efforts by sharing the view of the firefighters inside a blaze.

The police system is also quite similar to UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg's Tele-Actor, a "human robot" sporting wireless Web cams and microphones. Groups of online participants can collaboratively control the Tele-Actor as "it" moves through remote spaces. For example, in one experiment a class of high school students "visited" a restricted biotechnology laboratory using the Tele-Actor as their collective avatar. "  12:16:59 AM