We talk a lot about crime, but what if there was a way to help police patrol, without putting more lives at risk? Knightscope Inc. introduces us to robots designed with your safety in mind.
"What you're seeing behind me is the Knightscope K5. It's an outdoor security robot," said Stacy Stephens.
The robot or "Automated Data Machine" is the latest in crime-fighting bots.
"He's patrolling the area looking for anomalies that he will then report back to a security operations center. They will look at the information decide if it's something of interest and then they will deploy somebody," said Stephens.
Stephens is a former police officer and the co-founder of California-based Knightscope. Together with security company Allied Universal, they've created indoor and outdoor units. They call them K3 and K5.
NewsChannel 5 met up with the team at Lincoln College of Technology in Nashville.
"This is the first foray for Knightscope in Tennessee. This is the first robot that Tennessee has seen from us," he said.
Stephens is hoping to bring these ADM units to shopping centers, airports, hospitals, even college campuses. You may have seen them in other states, where they are already on-patrol.
"We have robots now operating in California, Texas, Massachusetts. We're going to DC, New York, Florida and Georgia next," he said.
The robots are not meant to replace police or security professionals but they do have the ability to monitor 24-7 and have many features to help augment security operations.
"All of our machines have a 360-camera on-board, 2-way audio. The machine does talk to you. We have thermal cameras, license-plate recognition, people detection and even signal detection to find mobile devices," he said.
Knighscope's devices can be leased for about $7 an hour. For more information click here.
