\n<\/p>\n
Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military.<\/p>\n
Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan\u2019s capital, introduced a \u201cnew patrol partner\u201d for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in a post on Facebook on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis robot, equipped with an optical panoramic survey system, can create 360-degree images, accurately locate facilities, and even automatically report missing items,\u201d Lee said, noting its ability to \u201caccumulate comprehensive data\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, an opposition councillor, Chien Shu-pei, said she had learned that the robot had been made by Unitree, a fast-growing robotics startup based in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.<\/p>\n
Unitree\u2019s humanoid robots have appeared in the official lunar new year gala and at the recent humanoid robot games in Beijing, and its founder and CEO, Xingxing Wang, has met China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year a US congressional committee said Unitree\u2019s robots were \u201cdual use\u201d tech, marketed as civilian but also used in Chinese military drills and police operations.<\/p>\n
Chien said the council\u2019s procurement of a Unitree robot dog had \u201ccrossed the red line of information and national security\u201d. \u201c[This] is no different from sending a Chinese Trojan horse into the daily lives of citizens in Taipei City,\u201d Chien wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the council\u2019s new works division said it had bought only one robot, via a subcontractor, as a trial for maintenance inspections, and that while it was made by Unitree in China, the camera system was developed by the Taiwanese contractor Supratech. The statement said the new works division would \u201cprioritise clearing the security concerns before any further step is taken\u201d.<\/p>\n
A Unitree robot mounted with Taiwan-built camera systems was displayed at a Taipei tech trade show last year.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s ruling Communist party claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, and is preparing to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime, it barrages Taiwan with near daily grey-zone harassment, espionage and cyber-attacks. Taiwan has enacted strict laws and regulations about the importation and use of Chinese technology and equipment.<\/p>\n
Comments under Chien\u2019s social media post were fiercely critical of the city authorities. \u201cI could instantly tell that the model is from Unitree. The Taipei City government has zero awareness on information security,\u201d said one commenter. Another asked: \u201cAre you collecting data and paving a way for the PLA to conduct urban warfare here?\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Taiwanese military commentator Wang Cheng-ming urged the city government to be more cautious about using Chinese technology, noting there were domestic projects in development that could be used instead. \u201cCrucial\u201d mapping data gathered by the robot, which could not be obtained through satellite or photographs, would be highly sought after by China\u2019s military, he added.<\/p>\n
Taipei\u2019s mayor, Chiang Wan-an, asked by local media about national security concerns over the robot, said the city and central governments would be discussing the \u201cinnovative experiment\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military. Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan\u2019s capital, introduced a \u201cnew patrol partner\u201d for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[11028,1485,914,2752,671,11029,5464,11027,8974],"class_list":{"0":"post-18127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-chinesemade","9":"tag-city","10":"tag-council","11":"tag-dog","12":"tag-house","13":"tag-patrol","14":"tag-robot","15":"tag-taipei","16":"tag-taiwan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}