Chuck Norris And His Robots
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Did you know that Chuck Norris starred in a movie with a real military robot and in another played a robot? It's another set of fun facts to honor the passing of a truly remarkable individual.
Chuck Norris led a remarkable life so it shouldn't be too surprising that somewhere along his 86 years he encountered robots. Beyond, of course, those Chuck Norris robot jokes: The Terminator self-destructed when it learned it was sent to kill Chuck Norris. Or: A robot attempted to mimic Chuck Norris's karate moves but got stuck in an infinite loop trying to perfect the roundhouse kick.
The movie with the real robot was Code of Silence (1985) where Norris is a police officer in Chicago trying to bust a drug cartel. The department has just acquired a new robot, a 2 ton mini-tank called the Prowler. The Prowler was a real world robot developed for the military as part of their initial foray into robotics. In the real-world, Prowler was strictly teleoperated; in the movie the robot could be teleoperated or put in autonomous mode where it would automatically track and shoot anything moving. At that time, computer vision wasn't reliable enough to do that, but it seemed like it would get there in a few years (actually 40 years later, so that prediction was an epic fail).
While the movie does not hold up well (slow pacing, questionable decisions, and OMG the 80's soundtrack), the Prowler theme in the movie turns out to be surprisingly accurate and prescient. Watch the clip below (with a gratuitous inclusion of Norris fighting). The first time we see the Prowler is with a demonstration smarmily presented by John Mahoney. Norris' captain growls pointedly at Norris that its "the perfect cop, damned thing follows orders." Norris leplies, "Another gun without a brain." And looks mournful. He is anticipating the 2010s when drone operations and assasinations became acceptable, an ethical quandry to this day. He then illustrates the brittleness of automation when Prowler is supposed to detect and track him as he evades. Norris pivots behind another detective, using him as a shield, highlighting that Prowler's algorithms may be able to track Norris but would risked significant collateral damage if it had also fired. This is where reasoning would come in for a truly intelligent or trustworthy robot.
The scene is what I think of as Chekov's robot, after the playwright's Chekov's gun principle that t if a "loaded gun" is shown in the first act, it must be fired by the third- both for foreshadowing and also making sure any irrelevant details do not distract from the narrative. At the end of the movie an hour later, guess what Norris must use to single-handedly take down the gun cartel?
Code of Silence gets right that the robot later in the movie needs a large trailer for transportation (larger bomb squad robots still do). It also catches that many early military robots had a limited tilt mechanism for their sensors, as if the engineers could only conceive of targets being on level ground in front of the robot, not sometimes on higher terrain. Norris quickly grasps this and drives the Prowler up a pile of gravel to get a shot into the second story of the warehouse the bad guys are hiding in. The movie indirectly shows the limitation of a mini-tank, which might be great for the Army, for police action-- it is too big for most buildings. It works in the open warehouse space but has no way of following or tracking the cartel members down hallways (though it can blow up walls).
The movie where he plays a robot is Agent Recon (2024), a truly terrible movie where Norris has a few minutes as a humanoid robot leading a covert op/special security force/ninja/whatever team fighting... wait for it... aliens. Really. (I watched it so you don't have to.) Note how we know Norris is a robot because his eyes literally light up and flicker- watch below.
The movie poses the question of whether real world humanoids like these Chinese kickboxing champs can fight as well as an 84 year old martial arts guru. Compare the two videos below. My call? Although Norris only gets one kick in and his foot doesn't go as high as his waist, he doesn't fall down so the nod goes to Norris!
RIP Chuck Norris, you'll always be the Texas Ranger, and robot operator, of my dreams!
Check out more movies and books with robots and how well they stack up to robots in the real world at roboticsThroughScienceFiction.com Plus subscribe to the RTSF mailing list!
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