They won't make a US Predator drone jealous, but it appears that soon, a few American police agencies will be deploying tractored robots with Tasers.

In the true spirit of cooperation, IRobot Corporation has teamed up with the Taser company to offer our fine metallic friend here to both the military and police forces. This potential law enforcement robot has not yet been named. Maybe they'll consider the name Robotic-cop? Or some shorter version of that perhaps? Maybe Boto-Cop? Time will tell.

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, was quoted as saying that "I think at some point toward the end of the next decade, you're going to start seeing RoboCops, or [maybe even] Terminators." IRobot has not publicly announced any plans to build robots armed with guns. "Right now," said Jim Myarcsuk, vice president of buisness development at IRobot, "we have no plans to take any robot with a lethal-weapon approach to market." Sure thing Jim -- I'd buy that for a dollar!

The successful IRobot company has offered numerous home-robots to the public for a few years now. A popular product of theirs is a disc-shaped vacuum-cleaner robot called the Roomba. But this robo-officer is not IRobot's first introduction to protecting the innocent, and upholding the law: they also have sold robots to the military to disarm bombs and finding dangerous, troublesome terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This fiesty metallic enforcer of order and justice is a bit small and friendly looking, but don't let this fool you: this robot is half-track, half-sized, but all cop.