Robots with the ability to use lethal force will not be rolled out in San Francisco— at least for now.

Amid outcry from residents, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to pause the rollout, which they had previously approved.

“We stopped the use of killer robots in San Francisco today,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said, according to CNN. “The public outcry helped six Supervisors fully appreciate the gravity of last week’s vote and the numerous unanswered questions about both the ethics and practical implications of allowing police to use machines to kill human beings.”

The issue was sent back to a committee for further consideration. It could be voted on in the future, according to The Associated Press.

Police wanted the robots to be equipped with explosive devices in extreme situations.

"Do we want to risk lives and the public by getting ourselves exposed to the suspect or can we send a robot in to deal with it," David Lazar, assistant chief of the San Francisco Police Department.

Supervisor Dean Preston said Tuesday the city shouldn't be providing more tools to use lethal force. He believes leaders should be looking for more ways to de-escalate situations.

The photos look like a scene out of science fiction: Robot dogs patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border, climbing over harsh terrain to search for threats and contraband.

But these images are real.

The Department of Homeland Security recently released them as it revealed details about how it's testing the technology.

Officials praised the robots' potential as a "force multiplier" that could boost Border Patrol agents' safety by reducing their exposure to life-threatening hazards. An article touting the tests on the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's website notes that someday the dogs, officially known as Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicles, could become "a CBP agent or officer's best friend."

"Don't be surprised," it says, "if in the future we see robot 'Fido' out in the field, walking side-by-side with CBP personnel."

But the details about the testing did seem to catch some people by surprise, sparking a flurry of reactions on social media comparing the images to dystopian scenes from sci-fi shows like "Black Mirror."

"This really felt like a slap in the face," says Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an umbrella group that slams the initiative as an "alarming and outrageous" waste of taxpayer money that would be better spent developing systems to hold Border Patrol agents accountable.

Gaubeca describes herself as a lover of technology and dogs (she has five). But she says she sees nothing cute in the government's recent descriptions of robot dogs lending a "helping paw." For years her organization has warned that militarization along the border puts communities and migrants at risk. And this, she says, is just the latest troubling example.

"There are other technologies that they're already using that we feel like they should cut back on, and yet they're adding on another type of surveillance technology that's frightening, to be honest," Gaubeca says. "This certainly seems like it's something that's built for something very aggressive, like the theaters of war, rather than in a community."

Ghost Robotics, the Philadelphia-based company that makes the robots DHS teams have been testing, says there's nothing to be afraid of.

"We're focused on doing the right thing. We want to do the right thing for the national security and for the country," CEO Jiren Parikh says.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman says the project remains in the research and development phase, with no timetable for the dogs' deployment.

In the meantime, there are plenty of serious issues this technology is bringing to the surface.

There's a difference between science fiction and reality

Sometimes cute and sometimes creepy, robot dogs have been captivating Americans' imaginations for decades, long before videos of Boston Dynamics' four-legged robots dancing to Motown and BTS started going viral.

They've been symbols of futuristic innovation -- and ominous harbingers of what could happen if technology falls into the wrong hands.

In 1940, Westinghouse displayed a 60-pound aluminum-skinned dog at the World's Fair named Sparko that could walk, bark and sit. In the 1960s, the Jetsons' futuristic cartoon family briefly adopted a nuclear-powered electronic dog, Lectronimo, before deciding to donate him to the police department.

Menacing mechanical hounds hunted down fugitives in Ray Bradbury's dystopian 1953 novel "Fahrenheit 451." In 2017, an episode of "Black Mirror" featured terrifying robot guard dogs who chase and kill people.

But Parikh, Ghost Robotics' CEO, says there's a big gap between the way robot dogs are portrayed in science fiction -- and sometimes skewered on social media -- and the reality of the technology.

"It's a battery-operated computer that moves around on four legs that literally stops operating in four hours. There's no way they're going to be taking over anything," he says.

And, he notes, "it's a robot that's remotely controlled by a human in the middle."

But still, Parikh says his company's robots do provide a number of advantages in border zones. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is patrolling a huge geographic area, he notes, often under harsh conditions.

"This is a good way of technology adding value," he says, "filling in the holes."

During testing of the 100-pound robots, different types of cameras and sensors were mounted on them, transmitting real-time data to humans operating them via laptop or hand-held remote, DHS said.

Teams first tested them on asphalt, grass and hills in Lorton, Virginia, then tested them in more realistic scenarios in El Paso, Texas, where they walked up hills, down ravines and over rocks. The El Paso testing simulated sentry duty and inspections. And exercises also included maneuvers in tight spaces, high heat and low-oxygen conditions, "situations that are especially dangerous for CBP agents and officers," DHS said.

DHS Science & Technology program manager Brenda Long describes the dogs as a "great fit," given CBP's broad mission and the many risks its personnel face.

"The southern border can be an inhospitable place for man and beast, and that is exactly why a machine may excel there," she said in the department's press release.

Advocates at the border say they already felt under siege

Community advocates at the border have long accused the U.S. government of militarizing the region and using excessive surveillance. And the announcement of the robot dog testing doesn't help matters, Gaubeca says

"Border communities already feel over-surveilled, over-militarized, and yet they trot out this new technology and boast about it at a time when families are worried about how to get food on their tables and inflation," she says. "And it completely disregards the border communities as a community. It's like they fail to acknowledge that we're human beings on both sides."

For Gaubeca, it boils down to how resources are allocated.

"It's a use of technology that creates more problems and doesn't solve what we see as being the issue, which is how do we make this agency accountable, and how do we create a more humanitarian and efficient system at the border?" she says. "They should spend the money on something that is more humanitarian and effective, rather than intimidating."

The Biden administration has said it wants to create a more efficient, humane, orderly system at the border, but "this completely contradicts that sentiment," she says.

Ghost Robotics has partnered with the U.S. Defense Department in the past. And Parikh noted he'd just gotten off the phone with Ukraine's defense ministry before speaking with CNN this week. But he said the robot dogs on the U.S. border aren't part of a military effort -- and any suggestion that they are is silly.

"It's just another sensor carrier. It's really at a distance.... It's really for sensing around the environment. It's not really interacting with people. That's not what it's made for. There's no weapons on it," he says. "It's not being militarized for the border. It's not stopping people, saying 'don't go here.' It can't do that. It's a small robot."

The technology, he says, is designed to keep people safe. But could it ever be used against migrants at the border?

"That's not even come up ever," Parikh says. "It's not even a remote use case that's ever discussed or talked about."

People can't even agree about "a basic physical wall that's made of concrete and metal," he says.

"Do we really think we're going to start weaponizing robots? It's silly to do that. I don't think that's in the DNA of America either," Parikh says. "We live in a country that has so many rules and regulatory requirements in place that things like this are just remote and virtually impossible without the say of the populace."

Parikh says Ghost Robotics regularly works with legislators as well as government agencies.

"This is not done in a vacuum .... It has to go through processes and rules. Everything we do, everything, gets questioned. Everyone has the ability to question what we're doing."

This isn't just about the border

When Greg Nojeim heard about the robot dogs, his mind filled with questions. Chief among them: Has anyone studied their impact on privacy?

"The border has become a testing ground for new and intrusive surveillance technology," says Nojeim, co-director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

And in many cases, he says, the law hasn't caught up with the developing technology.

"Once the platform becomes accepted, believe me, new uses will be developed. It's inevitable. And I don't think we're ready as a society to say, this use is permissible, this is not. I don't think that legislatures are ready to say this is permissible, this use is not. ... I'm concerned that the technology is getting ahead of the law."

He says when that happens, civil liberties suffer. And that, he says, should matter to everyone, whether you live near the border or not.

As a recent Los Angeles Times opinion column noted, surveillance technologies that start out at the border often make their way into other parts of the country.

Facial recognition technology is one recent example, Nojeim says.

"That technology has now spread to some police departments, and people are finding that it doesn't identify people as well as it could, and that people of color are being misidentified at alarming rates," he says.

If robot dogs start patrolling the border, Nojeim says, it's only a matter of time before they could show up in your community, too.

The way a jellyfish swims can be compared to how a human heart beats — at least that's what Harvard bioengineering professor Kit Parker thought when he took his daughter to the aquarium years ago.

"So, I'm looking at these jelly fish swimming, and my daughter's a toddler then. She's, like, running around," Parker said. "And I'm thinking, 'Wow, so that thing beats just like the heart, and it's small enough — I bet I could build that.'"

Parker is one of the researchers behind a bio-hybrid robotic fish powered by human heart cells. He hopes the project can help researchers learn more about the human heart and, eventually, create an artificial heart one day.

"Ultimately, our goal is to build a heart for a child born with a malformed part," Parker said. "We learned a lot. We learned now about how to build muscular pumps with human cardiac biophysics, build a fish out of human cells and how to keep them alive for a long time."

Researchers at the University of Vermont and Tufts University recently released new research on what they say is a living robot, called xenobots. The bio-hybrid fish also fall under the living robot category.

But unlike xenobots that keep evolving, the bio-hybrid fish have been destroyed. Parker says we won't see them again, and they were solely used as a training tool.

He plans to continue his research into building a successful artificial heart.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas highlights some of the year's innovations in technology, showcasing robots that have been developed to handle everyday tasks.

One robot that's already emerged in the South Korean market follows you around, hauling your luggage and even taking it to your room, and it doesn't even expect a tip.

All it needs is the guidance of a human being.

Bellhops may not be too impressed, and restaurant bussers may want to throw water at another new robot that wants to do their job for them.

That robot can navigate around restaurants, collecting plates, glasses, and other dirty dishes.

The model goes for around $18,000 and is already being put to use in restaurants in China. 

Another robotics company hopes you'll be so fed up with shoveling snow that you'd shell out $3,000 to $4,000 for the Snowbot — the world's first smart snow-clearing robot.

You use beacons to set a perimeter and let the snowblower do its thing. Eighty of them are being beta tested this winter.

A South Korean company has also created a prototype of a robot designed to autonomously move through a parking garage and charge electric vehicles.

However, this is the first prototype, so the company doesn't have a timeframe for when you might see one of them at a garage near you.

All of these are examples of how the next generation of robots — empowered by artificial intelligence — are offering potential solutions for tasks more consequential than fixing us a cup of coffee.

Jason Bellini at Newsy first reported this story.

A nearly human-sized robot grabs a dish out of a crowded sink with its gripper arms and neatly adds it to the dishwasher. It then sets the table, placing a flower into a vase, and pours a glass of red wine.The robot, Samsung's Bot Handy, is the company's vision for "a better new normal," as more people work, cook, eat and drown in dishes at home than ever during the global pandemic. As seen in a video shown at the all virtual 2021 Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Bot Handy is, well, handy around the house; not only to pick up some unfinished chores but to remind you of upcoming meetings and to stretch your legs if you've been sitting for too long.It's only in development for now — no pricing or release date has been announced — but Samsung said it's part of a greater effort to make technology to simplify your life at home. "The technologies in your home need to work harder to help you adjust to this new normal," the company said in its session description on the CES website.Companies big and small showed off their new innovations at the closely watched tech trade show, which kicked off on Monday, many with features tied to life during the pandemic. There's MaskFone, a face covering marketed as having a built-in N95 filter, earbuds and microphone to make calls, and a wearable for the ears called Cove that claims its gentle vibrations regulate anxiety and stress.For the kitchen, manufacturer Kohler showed off voice control features for its sinks and other fixtures, so homeowners can turn on faucets without ever touching them. UK startup Handsteco touted sinks with built-in artificial intelligence to guide people through hygiene techniques in hospitals, offices and public spaces.The pandemic tech theme took a step outside the home, too. Riding on the growth of online deliveries, lock manufacturer Yale announced it's now shipping its smart delivery box to keep packages safe from porch pirates when they arrive. A delivery person places a package in the storage box, which automatically locks, and homeowners receive a notification.Video: COVID-19 etiquette robot reminds shoppers to social distance and wear a maskWhile some of these products, like Bot Handy, may seem a bit gimmicky, ABI Research analyst Jonathan Collins said there's definitely money to be made from items that help automate household tasks. The market research firm found the smart home market in 2020 grew 6.7% over 2019 to $88 billion. However, that's $11 billion below pre-pandemic expectations.Even products that weren't specifically pandemic-related may still tap into the way we live now. Flashy new TVs, a mainstay of CES events, seemed all the more fitting this year as we're stuck at home, glued to the TV and ever-more conscious of our surroundings. LG, for example, drummed up excitement over its new 55-inch transparent TV, the latest company to show screens you can see through when off.Meanwhile, a Panasonic hair dryer that you don't need to move — a built-in oscillator does all the work for you — also generated some buzz, at a time when many people have not gotten a proper haircut or blowout in too long.People watch CES events to get a sense of where technology is going in the years ahead, but this year's event is arguably about the industry catching up to the ways the pandemic reshaped our lives in the past year.With vaccines on the horizon, it's unclear how much longer we'll be largely stuck at home, but these tech companies seem to be betting that even if the pandemic ends, our habits won't entirely change.