Tubularsock was sitting reading the German press and ran across this story. The interesting thing is that Tubularsock’s top floor corner office overlooking Washington D.C. from Oakland, CA is a stones throw from Mountain View as the crow flies.
And it took the Germans to fill Tubularsock in on a local story.
A few side notes. Mountain View is a traffic infested dumpy little town south of San Francisco and for the life of Tubularsock where a view of a “mountain” comes into the picture is beyond me!
Yes, the coast range moves along the coast but “mountain” is an exaggeration to say the least.
That being said Knightscope has in reality created seven K5 robots and four of them have already been ordered for use at a technology company.
A K5 is about as tall as a person and is designed to “act friendly and threatening at the same time”. Kind of like your mother-in-law on Thanksgiving!
These little guys are packed with cameras, microphones, weather sensors, navigation equipment and electric motors which allows a K5 to slide on rollers across the floor or parking lot and evaluate it’s surroundings and they are programmed to detect “abnormal behavior”, sure …….. No, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for …..
According to the U.S. Census there are about a million people that work in sentry type jobs in security companies. K5 can do this type of work for less than half the cost of a living person. Their battery lasts for 24 hours and is programed to go to the charging station when low. Recharge time takes 15 minutes. Hey! Every worker needs a break!
And that is exactly why Tubularsock came up with the idea of unionizing them. That, and the fact that a K5 isn’t armed yet. So to organize them is still safe for Tubularsock. But of course drones weren’t armed when they started out either ……… the possibilities are unlimited!
Just a matter of time …….. and as long as the Grand Jury is filled with BOTS there won’t be any indictment against a K5 either!