Will robots ever replace human security guards ? Sounds like a sci-fi movie, doesn’t it ? Well it is the future, Microsoft has been working with a start up company Knightscope 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.
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.
nightscope 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 security companies may be offering this service in the not too distant future.
