There’s a new sheriff at the Stanford shopping center, and he has high-definition infra-red cameras and can process 300 license plates a minute.
There’s a new sheriff at the Stanford shopping center, and he has high-definition infra-red cameras and can process 300 license plates a minute.
At the Stanford shopping center in Palo Alto, California, there is a new sheriff in town — and it’s an egg-shaped robot.
The idea of a robot security guard was born after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Stacy Dean Stephens, a former Dallas police officer who sits on the board of the not-for-profit International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), found out in a board meeting that if the police had reached the scene just 60 seconds earlier they could have saved at least 12 more lives than they were able to.
“That was a problem we felt was definitely worth solving,” he said. Analysing the situation, he decided the problem was one of intelligence. “And the only way to gain intelligence is through eyes and ears,” he said. He co-founded Knightscope, the company that leases out the robots as a security aid. They are completely autonomous, navigating like self-driving cars. They have high-definition infra-red cameras; microphones that allow the robot to either interact with people or listen for sounds such as breaking glass, and even detection systems that can intercept the pings of mobile phones, and license-plate reading software that can process 300 license plates every minute.
The slightly comical Dalek design was intentional, Stephens said. “We could have gone two ways: friendly, or ominous. But you don’t want to scare everyone and make them not like the tech; you want it to be comforting. Like a police officer, you want to walk a fine line between having a commanding presence and not scaring a grandma, or little Janie.”
Each unit has self-preservation devices — no offensive capabilities such as a Taser, Stephens was at pains, but with a loud alarm and geo-tagging it can call for help if attacked. So far the reaction has been positive.
“Everyone likes to take robot selfies,” Stephens said and. added there have been two instances where the company found lipstick marks on the robot where people had kissed the graffiti-resistant dome.
