Drug runners are already using robotic submarines to ferry illegal drugs to the USA. For example, in the photo shown, the US Coast Guard seizes $196 million of cocaine from robot submarine
With accurate GPS locating devices, dead drops and stash locations are increasingly making law enforcement more difficult. Here is an article addressing the topic by a scientist familiar with the current state of technology.
"Robots will increasingly be used in crime and terrorism, with criminals hacking or copying police and military machines." So claim University of Sheffield computer scientist Professor Noel Sharkey, Interpol advisor Marc Goodman, and former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross in an article called 'The Coming Robot Crime Wave' in the August edition of the IEEE magazine Computer.
"The growing availability of robotics knowledge and components will promote a new breed of garden shed robot criminals and terrorists," said the University. "Building robots is 80% cheaper now than 20 years ago and experts are calling for manufacturers to 'think thief' and plan against crime when they are designing machines."
Colombian drugs cartels, according to Sharkey, are already using robot submarines to deliver cocaine."Robots could assist a vast range of crime from drugs vending to murder, voyeurism and burglary. Robots can't even be detected by the passive IR alarm systems in most of our houses," he said. "More pressing though, is the danger that criminals or terrorists will hack into armed military or police robots and pose a threat to life.
Although the predicted crime might be 10 or 20 years away, Sharkey, Goodman and Ross urge scientists and engineers to be mindful of future crime prevention now, for example: building in software components that could assist forensic analysis.
