The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a dog-like robot that can jam home networks and IoT devices during police raids.
The US DHS has announced that it has purchased the robot dog Vision 60 Q-UGV by Ghost Robotics and has converted it to block the wireless transmissions of smart home devices during police raids.
The robot was revealed at the 2024 Border Security Report and is called NEO. According to DHS Director of Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), Benjamine Huffman, the NEO is equipped with an antenna array designed to overload home networks, disrupting Wi-Fi-based devices and other protocols wireless communication.
In addition to jamming smart devices, law enforcement can also use the robot to communicate with each other in the area, as well as view video and audio in a potentially dangerous environment, before entering.
Its raison d'être came from one incident in February 2021, when a suspected child molester used his doorbell camera to see FBI agents at his door serving a search warrant. The gunman opened fire with a rifle on them and behind the closed door, killing two agents and injuring three others.
In the US, law enforcement seems to be keeping up with technological developments. Smart home devices began to become common in the mid-to-late 2010s, with many users installing them to automate many parts of their homes and enhance security.
Thus, anyone with a little technical know-how and ingenuity could potentially create a hostile environment using commercially available wireless devices.
While NEO may not be able to affect wired devices, it will still be able to disable the radio frequencies used by most wireless IoT devices, thus reducing the risks to police officers.
