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Show PROFILES © BY DAN EGAN Josh Scharman Bike Patrol Officer Leaves Doughnuts Alone Josh Scharman does not like the cop-in-a-doughnut-shopstereotype. + Heae it's way outdated. overweight cop,” says the ee Salt Lake City police of- for lunch, he andhis fellow bicycle patrolofficers head to the police stabese gym for weightlifting or ajog Top, the Sarcos Humanoid Robot. Above, a scene from on We ride year round,” says the former manager for a sporting goods Store, It is not uncommonfor a down- Steven Speilberg's “A.|. Artificial Intelligence,” a movie that imagines fully conscious machines.Left, Steven with a pistol and extra ammunition clips, a baton, pepper spray and two pairs of hand Scharman. Says he and his fellow bicycle officers reos to everything car-based cops Jacobsen, CEO of Sarcos in Research Park, holds a robotic headthat his company is working on. Below, Mark Colton, a doctoral studentat the U.of U., demonstrates the “We can actually beat cars to places downtown, just because of the dense traffic,” he says. says he has even pulled vec drunk drivers: "The bikes don't have sirens,so a tap on the window or a wave of the arm is often the first sign to an inebriated driver that heis in trouble. “Downtown, it’s pretty easy (to catch up with a car) because there Utah/MIT dexterous hand. Utah ExpertDoubts. There Is are so manylights,” he says. Often the bike patrols are more stealthy than a car in their approach toa crime scene. Sometimes they ve neup ee to face with the perpe- True ‘Atificial Iteligence a come across guys while they’re shooting drugs into their arms,” he says. “That's something you don’t get in the car.” spent a couple of years ~ on a regular patrol oes he applied BY VINCE HORIUCHI THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE tephen C. Jacobsen’s company makes robots for the military, research and the medical and entertainmentindustries. But what he really he needs is one for himself. headto wait a couple of months before a spot on the crew opened up. While bike patrol officers are also issued vehicles, most choose to spend their days and nights not behind the wheel, but over the wheels. “It’s the best job in the world when it’s warm outside ,” he says. Jacobsen is not just having a bad day, “It’s a bad decade,” he said laughing, as his Salt Lake City company, Sarcos, is inundated with new contracts to build more elaborate automatons. But thefact is, a robot in today’s world or in the near future is not going to help him with his countless meetings or the brainstorm sessions with his engineers. Despite what you may see in Steven Spielberg's new movie, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” about a boy android who learns to love his mother, it could be another century before robots are capable of complete autonomous thinking, said Jacobsen,one of the country’s leaders in humanoid robotics. “I don’t understand[the term]‘artificial intelligence.’ What does it mean? Mostof the artificial intelligence [right now]is mindless intelligence,” said Jacobsen, who also is the director of the based out of a station on Main Street still hit the streets on their bikes. He says he has noproblem un“winding after a typical shift, which runs from p.m,to 1 a.m. “I’m just pretty much tired,” he says. Scharman says he likes the exercise, and he says people seem to consider cops on bikes a bit more approachable. “A lot of people wave us over to Center for Engineering Design at the University of Utah. “People makeestimates about things they don’t know aboutyet, andit’sall just guessing right now.” In “ALL,” which opens Friday, Spielberg envisions a world with robots for service, companionship and ultimately, for love. In the movie, the robots are human-like androids capable not only of independent thought, but of emotions like fear, hate and love. But what has made grand science fiction for stories like Isaac Asimov's I, Robot or Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?still is far from science fact, said Jacobsen. “Lookata fruitfly. It has 500 neurons, andit also can fly and find food and mate. You would kill for a computerthe size of this room,” Jacobsen said, looking around his conference room, “to do the things a fruit fly can.” Someof the top research in robotics is being done at Sarcos, where they have built robots for clients like Disneyland, Ford Motor Co., and AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. They also produced the mechanical dinosaurs for Universal Studios’ Jurassic Park Ride, automated Sce ARTIFICIAL, Page B-2 Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune Rave Fears Prompt Utah County to Ban All-Night Dancing ‘THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE PROVO — ee seems, to be the “rave” in Utah County, with the County Commis- Jatest group of offi- inhibitions and creates a desire for physical contact. The drug has also wned various glow sticks, which ravers wave as they dance, sometimes chewing on pacifiers to counter the teeth grinding induced by the drug. The County Commission hopes the new deadline it imposed by a unanimous vote on Tuesday will’ 3 BY JEFF OLIVER ing into the area from Salt Lake County where police pressure is forcing promoters to find new venues. The proposal for the amended ordinance was made by Sheriff's Lt. Grant Ferre, who says Utah County provides ideal rave venues because ‘there are more remote areas than in Salt Lake County, Commissioners say the + tion is an amendment to a current dance hall ordinance meant to stop himself as a “casual goer to raves,” says officials are going overboard. “The alarm over drug use is very drug use rather than dancing. The commission will take up the issue again next month to consider an éxemption process for those who want to hold a dance past the 1 a.m. curfew. The new prohibition does not apply to private functions like wedlings or ies. cause any undue restrictions in the county since a dance request has not been put through the permit process in the past five years. While most rave partioipants and promoters do not deny drug use can be heavy at raves, they say police and elected officials should distin guish between dancing and drug aabuse. John Stanley, a disc jockey at Club Omni in Provo, who describes appropriate, but to attack all-night dances is far too extreme,”Stanley says. _ Raves should be handled by the police like rock concerts, he says, where individual drugoffenders are removed instead of shutting down the whole show Fabian Klappert, a BYUstudent from Germany, says compared with raves in Germany, Utah raves are more drug oriented. “In Germanypeople goto raves to have a good time. In Utah people go to rebel,” Klappert says Greg West is a student at Brigham Young University in Provo and president of Technoheds, an un official school club devoted, to the music. He says raves are growing in ity among lege and hi school students, and . hebelieves that the new policies will only serve to create more of a de- mand for raves and the music that fuels them. Tuesday's action by the commis. sion is not the only attempt to curb the dances in the county. Eagle Mountain, a new city on the north- east side of Utah Lake,is discussing a public gatheririg ordinance which would require a license to hold events attended by 30 or more people. Under the proposal, require- ments for a license would include crowd-control fences, a $10,000 deposit to cover any clean-up costs, providing portable toilets, , emer gency medical technicians and a $1 million insurance policy. Mayor Paul Bond says the impetus for the proposed ordinance was a rave the city allowedlast year based on false information. “{Organizers) rented a section of airport property from the city and said they were going to havea little Mormon dance,” Bond says. y |
