The Boss

About 1974 time the UK Army bomb disposal  units were developing a wheelbarrow machine (that looks like that 'alive' war robot from the film) It was used to approach suspect devices, look at them, determine what they were and conduct risk accessment and dismantle or blow them up. Quite a lot had been put into these machines by a development firm outside London (which is now near to the M25 and Heathrow). And UK Sp. Branch were usually found there looking at the various cars, vans and lorries who pulled up nearby to peep over the hedges/fences with cameras. Usually traced back to foreign houses in London. Anyway the engineers had solved problems with the drive, traction and torque and had come to HK to demonstrate to the army. Being good friends with this part of the army we invited the engineers to a tour of the Police facilities where they were wined and dined and wined and wined and we had the honour of their company for about 3 days whilst we with care free abandon doodled on napkins and talked about how good engineers they were and how DID you solve this and that and at the end of it we had the theory and workings for the first HK Police wheelbarrow. Dividing the plans into cells which were given to various street engineering firms we were able to produce a HK version of wheelbarrow for our use at less than a tenth of the cost the firm wanted to sell them for. It was like a small tank on rubber tracks wide enough for a house door fitted with a camera eye and armed with a shotgun with various bullets for different use and a water pik. This was a rod of water which was shot at rifle bullet speeds into a device. Such sudden compression of this volume of water and speed meant that the water took on a solid form and could pierce, blast, obliterate, flood a suspect device before for it could go off, and all from a distance. A safe alternative to the 'long walk' to the device. Today the Isralies have a similar robot that patrols their long empty border lines, only these war robots are all seeing on all spectrums fully automatic, have guns and explosive sniffers and are looking for lurking people who they interogate and they even have voice stress anaylisers to see if they are telling tales. Anything not right the suspect is detained for a patrol. How does it detain? If you move it shoots you with a machine gun. A long way from the tracked box on a wire all those years ago. 

If you look at Erics jumper the blue badge is the radiation badge we all had to wear as we were dealing with portable xray machines. These machines were described as the typical death ray devices that you see on Sci Fi pics. A black box about 20" square with a 12" dia barrel sticking out and kicking out a really strong x ray beam that you didn't want to be standing in front of. Used in the xraying of suspect devices to see what is inside,ie; material, anti-handling etc.