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Dutch police are planning to use an autonomous robotic dog in drug lab raids to avoid placing officers at risk from criminals, dangerous chemicals and explosions. If tests in mocked-up scenarios go well, the artificial intelligence-powered robot will be deployed in real raids, say police.

at Politie Nederland, the Dutch police force, has been testing and using robots in criminal investigations for more than two decades, but says they are only now growing capable enough to be practical for more complex jobs. One such job is raids on illegal drugs laboratories, which are carried out by the police force three or four times a week and require officers to risk their safety by dismantling equipment.

鈥淲hen the lab is in operation and you stop it, it can explode,鈥� says Prins. 鈥淣ormally, if people go in they鈥檙e wearing protective clothing and that sort of stuff, but then they cannot move so fast, they can only work for 20 minutes.鈥�

Prins says that the force already has a Spot robotic dog from Boston Dynamics, fitted with a robotic arm, which has been used under entirely manual control for investigating drug labs for some time, as well as in other operations such as surveillance. But researchers from the and the police are now conducting trials in mock-up drug labs with the robot under AI control 鈥� something that will free human officers for other jobs and hopefully make operations faster and more efficient.

鈥淚 want those guys being busy with the operation and not being busy with a robot. So that鈥檚 the game that we are playing now: how autonomous can we make it?鈥� says Prins.

Police officers have been injured in the past while dismantling sites such as drug labs, so the hope is that robots could make initial inspections, check that no criminals are present, build a map of the location and identify dangerous chemicals. Once that is done, officers can plan a safe way to dismantle the lab.

In tests, the robot was able to explore and map a 15-metre by 20-metre mock drug lab, and it correctly found dangerous chemicals, placing them into a safe storage container.

Prins says there are understandable safety and political concerns with using autonomous robots that will demand rigorous testing, but that the Spot dog will eventually be tested in real drug lab raids if all goes well.

at the University of Portsmouth, UK, says that the benefits of AI-controlled robots in scenarios like drug lab raids are huge. While real dogs must be trained individually, robots can easily be replicated once their software has been created, and their suite of sensors means they can massively speed up investigations. But human safety is the most compelling aspect, he says.

鈥淥ne of the drugs labs might blow up and take the robot with it,鈥� says Lee. 鈥淏ut I would rather use a robot that you can replace than a dog or a human.鈥�

Lee says that concerns about autonomous robots in these scenarios are misplaced because the machines will operate within set parameters and always under the watch of humans, but he does believe that risks need to be carefully monitored.

鈥淵ou just need to make sure that humans don鈥檛 get overly reliant on the machine because sometimes machines will get things wrong,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he caveat is they have to be really thoroughly field-tested. And then when you start to use them, I would say that you probably have to use them in places where, if all goes wrong, you can do the least harm.鈥�