After a surprisingly brief attempt to enhance safety at New York City’s busiest subway station, both tourists and locals are now witnessing the embarrassing sight of a plastic robot cop displayed behind the front glass of an abandoned retail store within the 42nd Street-Times Square subway station. This unfortunate situation has persisted for at least the past two months, turning the K5 Robot into a public relations nightmare for the largest metropolitan police force in America.
But what exactly is the Knightscope K5? Who is responsible for its creation? And, most importantly, why did the controversial Mayor Eric Adams personally endorse this device back in 2023? The answers to these questions reveal a story that could only unfold in the bustling city of New York, yet another example of misguided law enforcement that left city officials with a lot of explaining to do. Our tale begins with the enigmatic Knightscope, a robotics company based in California.
Established in 2013 and situated in Mountain View, which also hosts offices for major tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Samsung, Knightscope aims to enhance safety in high-traffic public areas like schools and mass transit hubs. Co-founded by William Santana Li, a former executive at Ford, and Stacy Stevens, a former police officer in Dallas, Texas, Knightscope emerged in the aftermath of the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, one of the deadliest incidents in American history.
Recognizing the absence of uniformed police presence and the lack of automated security systems in locations like schools and railway stations, Knightscope garnered significant investment support during the early 2010s from renowned tech and security firms including Microsoft, Uber, NBC Universal, and Allied Universal Group, the world’s largest supplier of private sector security guards. With substantial capital investments secured, Knightscope dedicated the remainder of the decade to designing a fleet of autonomous security robots adaptable to various environments.
Knightscope’s security robot lineup encompasses the stationary K1 model, specifically designed for monitoring single high-traffic entry/exit points over extended periods. The K3 Indoor variant, on the other hand, is built to navigate smaller, more confined indoor spaces. Lastly, we have the K7 Multi-Terrain Autonomous Data Machine, which can be best described as a radio-controlled 4×4 off-roader capable of swiftly maneuvering through open-air events like concerts and public demonstrations. Equipped with advanced video cameras, sensor arrays, 3D mapping software, and real-time streaming capabilities to police or security headquarters, the Knightscope robot fleet seemed to fulfill all the necessary criteria.
This includes the price per hour, which Knightscope promoted as equal to or better than the minimum wages of various US states in overall cost savings. However, standing just over five feet tall and weighing over 400 lbs (181.43 kg), the subject of NYPD fascination, the Knightscope K5, is an incredibly imposing figure. With a completely weatherproof structure housing a 360-degree eye-level video recording and streaming system, the K5 theoretically had everything it needed to serve as the surveillance tool for any security or police force, especially one as large as the NYPD.
With a brisk maximum speed of 3 mph, it would be inaccurate to say that the K5 can pursue criminals and incapacitate them like in the Robocop movies. Instead, the K5 is theoretically capable of using its range of sensors to detect various potential threats. Through its thermal anomaly detection software, the K5 is said to be able to identify explosive devices and hidden firearms without the need for a dedicated K9 officer and handler. With the F5’s automatic signal detection service, the robot can record approved, denied, or unknown wireless device MAC addresses as a cybersecurity measure.
But even beyond the somewhat intrusive MAC address logging, the K5 can also record more ordinary details such as license plate numbers. Whatever information the K5 comes across, it is all streamed in real-time, just in case human law enforcement intervention is required or if its integrated emergency contact buttons are activated in an urgent situation. The K5 was first put into operation in the mid-2010s, and Knightscope rents out its fleet at approximately $7 per hour. The yearly cost for Knightscope’s robot-as-a-service (RaaS) program ranges from $60,000 to $70,000, including the hourly rate for the technicians necessary to maintain these robots, which amounts to $150 per hour.
With all its annual expenses taken into account, the K5 is theoretically slightly more costly to operate compared to the starting salary of an average NYPD beat cop, which is around $58,580. However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing when the K5 is on patrol. Memes and online ridicule were widespread when one K5 unit fell into a park fountain in Washington D.C in 2017, causing damage to its delicate electronics. “Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars. Instead, we got self-destructive robots,” one tweet from a passer-by stated at the time.
In a separate incident from 2019, a woman from Huntington, California, attempted multiple times to call the police using a K5 robot that was deployed in a public park. The robot intentionally ignored her requests, which frustrated her to the point where she gave up and called 911 on her phone instead. Another incident occurred in San Francisco, where a K5 was accused of harassing homeless individuals who were outside of designated boundaries set by the operator, the San Francisco SPCA. As a result, the non-profit animal shelter terminated their contract with Knightscope, the company behind the robot.
Despite these incidents, New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams endorsed the K5 as an effective tool to combat subway crimes at the 42nd Street-Times Square station during late-night hours. In April 2023, Mayor Adams officially introduced the Knightscope K5 with NYPD decals in a media session. Later that year, in September, he announced a two-month trial run of the K5 at a rate of $9 per hour per machine, which was $6 cheaper than the city’s minimum wage for adult employees at the time ($15 per hour, now $16 per hour).
However, it’s worth questioning the purpose of having a human chaperone accompany the K5 during its deployments in New York City. This seems to contradict the idea of using a robot for security purposes. The NYPD appears to have realized this, as less than a year after Mayor Adams introduced the K5, the future of the robot in the police force is uncertain. The financial implications of this PR disaster for the city’s police department are significant and should not be taken lightly.
Photo: Twitter User S. Singer
According to the Source autoevolution.com