 |
| The K5 security robot. |
As the sun set on a warm November afternoon, a quartet of
five-foot-tall, 300-pound shiny white robots patrolled in front of
Building 1 on Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. Looking like a crew of
slick Daleks
imbued with the grace of Fred Astaire, they whirred quietly across the
concrete in different directions, stopping and turning in place so as to
avoid running into trash cans, walls, and other obstacles.
The
robots managed to appear both cute and intimidating. This
friendly-but-not-too-friendly presence is meant to serve them well in
jobs like monitoring corporate and college campuses, shopping malls, and
schools.
Knightscope,
a startup based in Mountain View, California, has been busy designing,
building, and testing the robot, known as the K5, since 2013. Seven have
been built so far, and the company plans to deploy four before the end
of the year at an as-yet-unnamed technology company in the area. The
robots are designed to detect anomalous behavior, such as someone
walking through a building at night, and report back to a remote
security center.
“This takes away the monotonous and sometimes
dangerous work, and leaves the strategic work to law enforcement or
private security, depending on the application,” Knightscope cofounder
and vice president of sales and marketing Stacy Stephens said as a K5
glided nearby.
In order to do the kind of work a human security
guard would normally do, the K5 uses cameras, sensors, navigation
equipment, and electric motors—all packed into its dome-shaped body with
a big rechargeable battery and a computer. There are four
high-definition cameras (one on each side of the robot), a license-plate
recognition camera, four microphones, and a weather sensor (which looks
like a DVD-player slot) for measuring barometric pressure, carbon
dioxide levels, and temperature. The robots use Wi-Fi or a wireless data
network to communicate with each other and with people who can remotely
monitor its cameras, microphones, and other sources of data.
GPS
and a laser ranging instrument help the robots find their way around
their patrol area and avoid obstacles when on duty. When they’re taken
to a new place—such as the Microsoft campus where they were patrolling
earlier this month before Knightscope cofounder and CEO William Santana
Li spoke at a tech event—a human with a wireless controller shows the
robot around to determine the area it will patrol and let it learn about
its surroundings. “You give it a base map and then it starts building
from that,” Stephens says.
Knightscope is one of a growing number of companies using robots to help with work traditionally done by humans (see “How Human-Robot Teamwork Will Upend Manufacturing” and “Smart Robots Can Now Work Right Next to Auto Workers”), or perhaps replace them altogether (see “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs”).
The trend is accelerating as robots are made ever smarter, more agile,
and more adaptable to specific tasks. And while most robots do
assembly-line work, Knightscope is one of a few companies betting that
they could take on other tasks.
Knightscope may not outright
replace many security guards soon—over a million of them were employed
in the U.S. last year, according to an estimate
from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the
estimated hourly wage these guards earned was more than twice the $6.25
that Knightscope says it will charge for its robots, which could tempt
some companies and schools to at least try them out.
The robots
have a battery that could last about 24 hours on a single charge, though
the K5 is supposed to monitor its battery life and wheel over to a
charging pad when needed. It takes 15 or 20 minutes to refuel.
Though
the K5 may look friendly and does not carry any weapons, it’s not meant
to be messed with. If you walk in front of it, it will stop abruptly.
Try to detain it, and after some time its built-in alarm will begin to
chirp as a warning while sending a low-level alert to a remote
monitoring center. Keep bothering it, and an ear-piercing alarm will
sound as it sends another alert, prompting an operator to use
Knightscope’s browser-based software to check out the status of the
sensors, see what’s happening around the robot, and talk to anyone who
may be there harassing it.
If you’re the one who needs help and a robot is nearby, you can press
a button near the top of its head to summon someone remotely.
Stephens
says several dozen potential customers are interested, including lots
of security companies weary of high guard turnover. Knightscope hopes to
start putting robots to work at a variety of companies in the first
half of next year.
The company envisions the robots going beyond
standard security applications. For example, Stephens suggests an app
that would let college students request one to chaperone them across
campus at night.
But Knightscope has plenty of challenges to
solve, both technological and cultural, if the robo-guards are to work.
For one thing, they will need to prove they can be effective over time,
and people will need to feel comfortable in their presence.
The
robots will also have to work on their balance. While speaking with
Stephens, I noticed that a K5 in the distance had somehow toppled over
the edge of the sidewalk onto the parking-lot asphalt several inches
below. A couple of Knightscope folks were needed to pull it upright.
Unlike human security guards, these robots still cannot right themselves
if they fall.
Source:
Technology Review
No comments:
Post a Comment