Robots Will Be Better Security Guards In Future

“We’ve got the future under control.” — RoboCop

In 1987, Hollywood presented RoboCop, a science fiction action movie directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan, in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy who is brutally murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the malevolent mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products as a super-human cyborg law enforcer known as RoboCop.

27 years later, Knightscope, a California-based startup has been busy designing, building and testing its first-ever security robot, known as K5. The project was kick-started since 2003, and after seven years of build-up, it’s ready to be deployed.

Presented at Building 1 of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, the quartet of five-foot-tall, 300-pound shiny white robots look friendly with no weapons at all. However, don’t even think about messing with one. If somebody walks in front of it, the robot will stop abruptly. If it feels it’s being detained, the K5’s built-in alarm will start to chirp as a warning signal while an alert is being sent to a remote monitoring center. When somebody continues to bother it, the robot gives out an ear-piercing alarm, sending out an alert that will prompt the operator to check its surroundings through browser-based software. The botherer is now in trouble.

Besides GPS lasers and heat-detecting technology, at the heart of K5 is a computer running dominux software that integrates all of that data and tries to make intelligent interferences — i.e. should I tell HQ about that large gathering of teenagers, or should that man be climbing in through that window?

What about helping out? If you find yourself in trouble/danger, there’s also a button on the top of K5 that summons help from HQ.

“This takes away the monotonous and sometimes dangerous work, and leaves the strategic work to law enforcement or private security, depending on the application,” said Stacy Stephens, vice president of sales and co-founder of Knightscope.

K5 is great! It’s not only capable of monitoring large areas and can detect dubious behavior, but also able to work without human control and can analyze information given from social media, business, and government sources to be able to predict the probability of a crime being committed in a certain location. The robot can run for around 24 hours on a single battery charge, automatically navigates back to the charging point when it’s running low, and only takes 15-20 minutes to recharge.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done with the K5 robot, as Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk used to say: “I like to just keep an eye on what’s going on with artificial intelligence. I think there’s a potential dangerous outcome there.” However, the most important thing is never losing one’s innovation spirit.

You may also want to read about Robots handle Customer Services, Robot that can transform into a sports car.

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