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After Math: Like looking into the future
It was an exciting week for futuristic technologies. Knightscope debuted its newest roboguard, Nest showed off a face-recognizing outdoor camera, and Google came up with a way to close your garage from anywhere in the neighborhood. Numbers, because how else will you know how long to wait for the future to arrive?
Knightscope’s new security bot looks like a mini concept car
Robot maker Knightscope has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. Its K5 security robot took a look at the harsh world and chose to throw itself into a fountain. And a different K5 robot was attacked and knocked over by a drunk guy. But now they've unveiled their latest security robot, and it looks kind of like a car.
Drowned security robot wasn't a victim of foul play
By now you've probably heard of that security robot that fell into a fountain in Washington, DC-- it's practically the stuff of legend as far as the internet is concerned. But what really happened on that tragic day? We're starting to get a clearer picture. Bisnow has learned that the robot, a Knightscope K5 nicknamed Steve, was neither the victim of a pushy human nor showing signs of trouble before it took its fateful plunge. It was supposed to follow a prescribed route that kept it out of harm's way, so the robot had to have made a decision to veer off the beaten path. Management and security staff had trained with the robot days before, too. But what was the cause?
Man arrested after knocking over a 300-pound security robot
Sure, the K5 isn't the cutest robot making its first steps into human society, but that doesn't mean drunks get to knock it over. One of the five-foot droids took a tumble last week in Mountain View, when a drunk man took umbrage to its whistlin', patrolling ways. (Knocking it over is a bit of feat in itself: The thing weighs 300 pounds.) It's not the first robot to suffer either. Softbank's (more adorable) Pepper has felt the cruelty of mankind while working in a phone store, while Hitchbot lasted just two weeks when it tried to cross America. It suffered a vandal attack in Philadelphia that cut its journey short.
Autonomous, human-sized security robots are almost here
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 (5 feet tall) 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 (plus GPS and laser rangefinding) 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.
