https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7dz7b/police-outsourcing-human-interaction-with-homeless-people-to-boston-dynamics-robot-dog

Despite pushback from the community, cops in Honolulu are using a $150,000 robot dog to take the temperatures of homeless people. According to a training document and deployment log obtained via a records request, Boston Dynamics’ dog-like Spot robot has largely been doing what HPD promised it would—the noble work of an $11 thermometer.

Honolulu’s police department first drew national media attention when Civil Beat reported it had spent $150,045 in federal funds earmarked for pandemic relief on Spot. At a presentation to city council last year, Honolulu PD explained that Spot would be used to patrol the Keehi Lagoon Beach Park homeless encampment in the city and, more specifically, would be used to take the temperatures of unhoused people living in encampments as an initial COVID-19 screening.This means that people living in the encampment would have regular initial screenings not with a human but with a dog-shaped robot under the guise of keeping cops safe from homeless people who potentially had COVID-19.