Want to hunt deer or bear remotely? You pay your money and you are given remote control of a rifle physically located in the Texas brush. The Washington Post explains how it works:
The Remington .30-06 rifle is mounted atop a homemade contraption of welded metal and a piece of butcher block, and is attached to a small motor, three video cameras (two linked to the Internet, including the one embedded in the gun scope) and a door lock actuator, like that used in a car. The actuator is attached to a wire that pulls the trigger at the click of the mouse. From virtually anywhere, someone with an Internet connection can fire the rifle.
Not surprising what the Internet enables. What is surprising is the coalition that supports a ban on animal hunting by remote control.
In a rare alliance, hunters and the National Rifle Association have joined forces with their traditional foes, the animal welfare and Humane Society activists. And some scholars, not surprised to see violent computer games elevated to another level, are questioning the propriety of an enterprise that blurs the line between the reality of man-stalks-beast in the great outdoors to the virtual anonymity of shooter-pulls-trigger from thousands of miles away.
This application inevitably begs the question of whether diabolical individuals wouldn’t propose this for a city street in Bagdad. Let’s hope the alliance is as vocal about humans as they are about hunting.
BTW, why can’t someone design a remote control device that is more beneficent towards the environment, like a tree seedling planter or a litter remover?
Frankly, the difference between being only 1000 yards away, shooting a high-tech rifle, and being that same 1000 yards away and clicking the mouse seems artificially created. There’s not much sport either way.
As far as having more beneficent devices, I think the problem is that few people want to do those tasks. If we could build the robot to do them, we’d be better off just programming the robot to always do it, with no human intervention required. We don’t want the remote-hunting application doing that one though I guess.