""Film fans of a certain vintage will tell you the original RoboCop's prime directives were to "Serve the public trust", "Protect the innocent" and "Uphold the law".
But while old metalhead takes a battering for his values in the 1987 film - remade last year - his real-life counterparts have a more mundane existence.
Because instead of tackling bad guys in crime-ridden Detroit, the 2015 RoboCops are directing traffic on the streets of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
With a population of more than nine million, the city's streets are often chaotic and human traffic police struggle to maintain order in an area where 2,276 people have died in traffic accidents since 2007.
And that's why the Kinshasa now has a five-strong team of huge arm-waving cyborgs - equipped with cameras and lights - to bring calm to the pandemonium.
The £20,000-a-pop bots tower over the traffic to bring order to the teeming tarmac of the central African country.
And the three latest additions to the crew even have their own names: Tamuke, Mwaluke and Kisanga.
Able to turn at the chest, the funny-faced street standers record the flow of traffic and send real-time information back to the police.
And despite their resemblance to a 50p toy out of a Christmas cracker, the rib-tickling robots have gone down a storm with the locals.""
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