Realistic! Police Robot Programmed to Roll Away if You Try to Report a Sexual Assault

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety announced this week that they’ve developed the newest technology in law enforcement: a four-foot tall, cylindrical robot topped with a regulation police cap whose sole purpose is ignoring reports of sexual assault. 

This innovative robot, called the “Filing & Reporting Assistive Technology Robot” or FRAT-Bot for short, has been programmed to roll away if you try to report a sexual assault. In a demonstration to the local media, Officer Alex Davis approached FRAT-Bot and announced that he’d like to report that he was raped on a college campus, at which point FRAT-Bot made a 180° turn and sped away at 4 miles per hour. 

FRAT-Bot also has different settings, such as “Interrogation”, where it asks the accuser, “Well, what were you wearing?” Or the “Fine, I’ll Do It” setting, where it accepts the report, but then claims to have lost it when asked again. 

In a statement to the press, Woodbury police captain Colin Wright said that he “hopes FRAT-Bot will lift a great weight off the police department’s shoulders, so that we can get back to the real work: arresting unarmed Black men for walking down the street.” 

FRAT-Bot goes into the field Monday, where it will join other “working robots” in the police force, such as NARC-Bot, which dispenses dime bags to at-risk children, and MOB-Bot, a menacing bot that accepts “voluntary” monetary donations.