Autonomous robotic security guards are almost a reality

You might not see quite so many security guards on the beat in the future. After roughly a year of work, Knightscope is almost ready to deploy the K5, a human-sized autonomous robot that’s designed to take care of the more mundane parts of security patrols. The machine only needs a bit of initial instruction to get a feel for its surroundings. After that, it keeps watch on its own using a mix of four cameras, microphones, radar and environmental sensors that can detect fires and gas leaks. The K5 uses either cellular data or WiFi to both share its findings and let its overseers speak, and it’ll set off an alarm if you try to immobilize it.

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.