Inspired, it seems, by Britain and America's robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.
LaserMotive, the Seattle company that designed the Pelican’s laser system, won $900, 000 by powering a 5kg robot up almost a kilometre of cable dangling from a manned helicopter.
The helicopter pilot sets up the robots according to our specifications and sends each new robot a sequence of messages to detail its task, which it is then able to carry out.