Behold, says robo-mall-cop maker: Our crime-busting dune buggy packed with spy gear In a modest industrial building in Mountain View, California, on Tuesday, security startup Knightscope unveiled the latest additions to its line of "crime-fighting robots" – the K1, a stationary weapon detector, and the K7, a sensor-laden dune buggy for challenging terrain. The upstart's earlier models, the K3 and the K5, can …
Or does wealth inequality require harsher measures in your world?
I could imagine robots programmed to follow them (the 1%) around in droves looking for a handout.
...Damn, there (programmers) go putting another hardworking group out of work, and this time it's beggars
Come to think of it, most celebs are pretty used to being followed around and harassed by tabloids anyway...
Either that or Gene Simmons is going to start populating robots with evil red-tagged chips that make them attack people, thankfully Tom Selleck is still in the law enforcement business (Blue Bloods) so we'll be safe.
If you're wondering what the hell I've been smoking, you've obviously not seen Runaway (1984) imdb.com/title/tt0088024/ (trailer youtube.com/watch?v=zCZY9Z6WvSY)
"Knightscope hopes to have 100 machines in the wild – if you can apply that term to malls, parking lots, and warehouses – by the end of the year."
Having seen the ferals that inhabit my local Shopping mall - "in the wild" is definitely the right term...
I'm waiting for the first time someone bundles one of these things into the back of a van (presumably GPS-shielded) and then strips it for parts. Even Robocop didn't escape that fate.
More seriously, I honestly wonder about the liability issues. If that thing falls over / drives over someone, then presumably the robot company pays the bill. "We're only paying for their services, we don't own the robot" is indeed the best thing at that point. Their problem, not ours.
It does make me wonder why you can't just hire a guy for less than $60,000 to do the same job, though.
It does make me wonder why you can't just hire a guy for less than $60,000 to do the same job, though.
Because you can't hire one guy to do that work.
8h shifts, you need 3 guys to do a day. Add in weekends and holiday cover and you probably need 5 people minimum. I doubt you'd get many braincells in your meat robot for $12,000/year.
Eliminate slightly skilled but essentially minimum wage job. Check
Protect richer people from poorer. Check
Limited functionality to solve a well defined need with high probability of success. Check.
Don't let customers play with them by programming them (IE the IBM mainframe model). Check.
They should go far, if one of the 'bots doesn't go all "Runaway" on someone.
Wheather or not they should go far in an ideal world is another matter.
If they are so worried about trillion dollar negative impact of crime in the US and want to make US safer then maybe ....
Make criminal justice system and post release process more about rehabilitation, when ex cons struggle to get a legit job, afford accommodation then going back to crime often seems the only option
Decriminalize a few commonly used drugs (kudos at least part way there in some states) to stop people getting criminal record for "crimes" that are almost based on a coin toss e.g. alcohol = OK, weed = crim
Have to add (just to get a few commentards frothing) - do something about the US gun laws, in the UK it is harder to legally get guns and various types of gun very difficult / impossible to get for personal use (plus a whole lot of sensible rules on how they are carried in "public"). Unsurprisingly gun crime deaths are low - yes we get violent crome (e.g. knives) but its a damn sight harder for someone to kill lots of people with a knife, close up than with an automatic at distance
Most of that trillion dollars will be cyber-crime, drugs and political corruption anyway. Unless the robot can backtrace an IP address or manage a sting operation, it will just get more people arrested for vagrancy, B&E, public urination and other petty crimes. Perhaps that is the intention.
I wonder how much piss it takes to short out the K7? That would make a seriously good Youtube video.
@ Jake
I suspect you're wrong.
the target market is those paying (what they see as) too much money for several grunts to stand around doing the same thing.
It's a "self service fast food booth", only instead of replacing the people serving you a burger, it's replacing the people selecting victims for pat-downs and screenings etc
In a 24 hour period you're likely to be employing 2-6+ people on a shift rotation to do [$job]. or 1-2 of these things stood working 24/7 for a flat rate, with fewer humans required to do the actual searching and checking etc.
Presumably the screens we see in McDonalds cost more to install than a servers salary, but it's a one time cost. Here, it's rented not owned yes, but it still must be cheaper than employing the relevant number of meatbags to do a similar thing. Remember you don't have to provide holidays/leave, healthcare, HR costs, etc etc etc to a cross between R2D2 and a bin.
I agree with much of what you say ... but renting a toy for $62K/yr that doesn't actually do anything that I can't do with about $4,000 worth of off-the-shelf parts doesn't sound like a serious business plan.
Also note that you still need the appropriate number of meatbags to handle the miscreant meatbags fingered by the system. Might as well put 'em to work between handling miscreants, no?
I see where you're coming from. you can stil reduce the overall number of monkeys employed.
The thing to think about here isn't what this ocmpanty sells now. thye'#re just making sure thye are amongst the first.
Firstly because they'll hoover up funding, and secondly because in ten years time when *everyone* wants shit like this they will be there, with their decade of experience, existing customers, contacts in law, mistakes already made and learned from, years of R&D etc etc and be ahead of the rest.
That or they'll go pop shortly. I don't think they will though. right now they're probably in loss-leader territory and burning through those hedge fund and VC dollars, but they have a product, are building a brand and all the things that go with it.
Basically hoping they are at the front of the queue when either some law enforcement agency, government entity or private company is ready to spend many, many millions on things like this.
Imagine being at the front of the queue when the TSA, NSA, FBI, or load of police departments decide they need this sort of thing nationwide. Yes. Please.
Also consider possible future expansions. They could get a daily upload of facial recognition data for known shoplifters from other locations. The human guards will recognize people they personally threw out before, but not ones from other malls or airports. They could also identify people by cell phone bluetooth beacons, wifi client addresses, car license plates, etc. All of that data would be very attractive to a mall. They could sell it to directed advertizers.
Looking at the model numbers all I could think of was
2, 4, 6, 8 Motorway
And of course in their sequence K-9 for a "robot" is already taken, not by those police units unable to spell properly either.
http://www.followingthenerd.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Heroes-of-doctor-who-k9-john-leeson-the-time-warriors.jpg
After all, who puts a laser on a sodding shark.....
TRB ... Strange how some music resonates across the decades, while most deservedly fades into oblivion. It would do today's kids well to give "Power in the Darkness" a good listen. The title track, and the entire album.
My own K-9s don't need lasers. They have teeth.
Are not the optimal people to test to destruction, for, hat you need children from age three up to high school age. If there is a way to break it or hack it one of them will find it.
Kids are not constrained by adult preconception they are far more novel and creative in their destructive processes.
What's next? The Knightscope Industries Two Thousand? The Knightscope Automated Roving Robot?
I saw where you are going....
Hell, why not. 'Smart' cars are in.
...Actually sod the 'Smart', just give me a 'Cylon eye' for the front of my car.
...We'd only end up with Cortana or Siri trying to do an americans concept of an English accent, failing to be droll (and probably ending up screaming racist abuse - thanks Microsoft).
Just needs a plumber's friend poking out from the top front piece.
What is it going to do when it detects a concealed weapon? The human may have a license/permit.
Lock down the immediate area, enclosing innocents in with a potential hostile actor? Now boxed in, with targets.
Call for and wait for humans to be dispatched from central?
Multiple threats and your few meat sack units will be overwhelmed.
"the K1 is a weapon scanner and will eventually be capable of scanning for radiation."
Because obviously when making a hidden weapon scanner designed to make America the safest country in the world, checking people for radiation is the important thing to look out for.
Assuming normal wear and tear type maintenance and not the more likely spray paint and knock 'em over, what's the TCO on one of these? More than just putting in a decent CCTV system with the same AI looking at lots of fixed cameras instead of through a few very expensive mobile ones?
These things seem like a solution looking for a problem.
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