Should have
replaced the shotgun with a cucumber then put the video on YouTube, could pay for another whole robot.
"Check out his expression at 2:17!"
A stealthy robot run by a Los Angeles SWAT team has successfully disarmed a murder suspect by sneaking up behind him and stealing his weapon. Ray B Bunge, 52, of Lancaster, California, was on the run from the police after charges of attempted murder, criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and felony vandalism …
I've lived on this planet a long time and I've never heard of a 'Berm'.
You learn something new every day, obviously.
For anyone else that's never heard of it either...
"Berm" (noun)
a flat strip of land, raised bank, or terrace bordering a river or canal.
a path or grass strip beside a road.
an artificial ridge or embankment, such as one built as a defence against tanks.
In certain type of manufacturing, berms are also used to direct any blast upward from something gone awry in certain processes, rather than let the shock wave travel horizontally and do additional damage to the expensive parts of the plant. There's a reason the term is "dirt cheap."
And yes, we run those processes remotely, thank you very much. Icon for something a berm doesn't contain very well.
I think it was invented a little pre-murica. They were in use outside any medieval castle several hundred years before North America was colonised by anyone carrying a firearm. From Wikipedia:
"In medieval military engineering, a berm (or berme) was a level space between a parapet or defensive wall and an adjacent steep-walled ditch or moat.[1] It was intended to reduce soil pressure on the walls of the excavated part to prevent its collapse. It also meant that debris dislodged from fortifications would not fall into (and fill) a ditch or moat."
As in all things where we are 2 nations separated by a common language, we think of it as the space in front of the wall where muricans insist that it is the defensive wall itself.
"Then again, robots aren't always so easy-going. In July, Dallas police used a similar robot carrying a bomb to blow up a suspect who was holding them off with firearms."
It's not the robots, it's the guys at the controls. Seems like the LAPD's SWAT team have some that are quife sensible. I hope that someone buys them a couple of after hour brewskis.