"Well if you care to follow me" Martin motioned for them to follow him, he crossed the open plan office and walked up a steep flight of stairs to the second level, a kind of veranda jutting out over a quarter of the office space, there he pressed a button on the wall and a mechanical whirling noise began, a metal portion of the roof, no bigger than a skylight appeared, he pressed the button next to it and a buzz began as a metallic ladder unfolded, without a word he clambered up it and motioned for the others to follow. There on the roof was a series of patio furniture arranged as some kind of grandstand, "Please take a seat" Martin pointed to the seats that gave a view of the industrial estate below them, he took out his mobile phone and rang someone and simply said the words, "It's playtime" before hanging up.
Without much warning a plume of blue smoke emerged from the garage doors opposite and four men in combat gear appeared through it joined by four people dressed in sports gear. They hurried off to different points around the area below before a whistle was blown, perfectly on cue a single RoboGuard appeared around the corner and began driving down what one could imagine an urban street. One of the civvies stood from their hiding place, the remote system on the RoboGuards roof appearing to scan towards them, the civilian began walking across the road and the RoboGuard slowed its rooftop system tracking them as they crossed the road before them. The Roboguard waited for them to pass before speeding up again. "That was done totally independent of human input" Martin said, "Not to disimilar a system to driverless cars. The next bit will be interesting." The Roboguard did a three point turn and began to drive back the way it had come. Once more a civvie stood and the results where the same, this time however as the Roboguard slowed to allow the person to cross a combat wearing "bad guy" stood from their covered position, the remote weapon system (RWS) swung towards them and waited nothing happened as the bad guy opened up with a paint ball gun splattering one side of the vehicle in bright orange paint. "Now clearly that's bad news for the poor Roboguard, while it can absorb a certain amount of small arms fire its not impervious to it. The reason it just watched is because it is in safe mode, kind of a safety catch on the RWS, a human operator has to make it weapons free." The shooter scurried off, the RWS following but not firing, Martin took out his phone, "Weapons free please" he spoke and almost instantly the system opened fire with a paint ball gun of its own. "Clearly a nice 7.56mm or even .50cal would be better, sadly we'd get through test subjects rather quickly" the gun scored several hits before the man got out of the weakened range.
The Roboguard resumed its patrol once the threat was gone, this time Martin spoke again. "Let it go fully auto please" Martin sat back and watched as the vehicle turned for a final pass, this time the other hiding test subjects stood almost at the same time, the RWS swung frantically between the six potential targets. One bad guy began shooting as the other two moved to new points, the system started firing after the first round hit it, the paint ball round thumping into the man's chest, the system swung back tracking other targets, it took another hit from a bad guy, returned fire and killed its shooter, next it spun to the civvie, felt a paint ball hit it from the opposite side, calculated its trajectory and swung, identified the shooter as they fired another round and returned fire. The final bad guy had moved close to a civvie and moved to avoid the first round, the RoboGuard began to fire on fully auto tracking its target, the shooter ran behind a civvie and the gun stopped as it swung to keep following the shooter, once the shooter was clear of the civilian it began to shoot again neutralising its target. The two remaining civvies walked calmly towards the Roboguard, the RWS snapped to them and waited, one reached out and touched the vehicle and nothing, the second stood just a meter to one side took out something from their pocket as they touched it. Both stepped back smartly, turned and ran, the automatic gun could be seen following them. Suddenly a "BANG" went off as a flashbang went off that had been stuck to the vehicle. "Now you see had that been a bomb we'd now have a dead Roboguard." Martin said taking a seat and reaching into a box next to the chair, he took out a standard issue East Moreland rifle and opened fire on the RoboGuard from the roof top while the smoke from the explosive device masked him, even though he ducked as soon as his three round burst had hit the metallic windscreen. Almost instantly Martin felt the five paint balls returned by the Roboguard smack him in the chest lighter than one would expect thanks to him being at the extreme of its pneumatic range. "See, distorted sight, elevated target and I'd still be dead." Martin rubbed his chest smearing orange paint on his t-shirt.
"Now I'll not boast this is a fool proof system, we've done similar tests hundreds of times creating different scenario's, the devices current rules of engagement are that it can automatically track and engage targets who have shot at it, currently this is one target at a time, the system will calculate which shooter is the biggest threat depending on where the RoboGuard is being hit. The system gets 85% accuracy, frankly today I'm surprised none of our civvies are dead" he chuckled, "Which is why we do not recommend at the moment operating it in automatic mode, the East Moreland Army in the Alps operate it much like a aerial drone, remotely driven and the weapons system under the drivers command. They have however on a number of occasions let them go free but maintained a lockdown on the weapon, the RWS being controlled by the operator. So far they have six confirmed Borlander kills. To date there has been one destroyed and that was in a scenario similar to the final test with the flashbang where the device had come across what was believed to be a family out hiking and a child of around 12 seemed to approach the vehicle with what the operator thought was a camera, it turned out to be a bomb that was thrown under the wheels. The vehicle was immobilised but the RWS was still operating when a recovery team arrived twenty minutes later. I'm happy to answer any questions."
