On his first day at work as a security guard, Steve was greeted warmly, drawing attention from passersby, including some taking selfies with him, at the tony retail-residential complex he patrolled. Then he fell into the fountain.
Steve was a security robot employed by the Washington Harbour center in the Georgetown district of the US capital.
According to some tech watchers, robots like Steve herald a new era for intelligent machines assisting in crime prevention and law enforcement.
Steve’s mishap in the middle of last month set of a flurry of reaction on social media, with some saying the robot had “drowned” or committed suicide.
However, Steve turned up on Twitter to debunk the fake news, tweeting: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Still, he had to be sent back to his Silicon Valley headquarters. He was replaced by his “sibling,” Rosie, which has resumed patrols in the complex.
Steve and Rosie are produced by the California tech start-up Knightscope Inc, which has raised about US$17 million and includes a team with experience in robotics, law enforcement, artificial intelligence and the automotive sector.
At Washington Harbour, property manager Allison Johnson of MRP Realty LLC said residents and tenants appeared happy to see Steve and Rosie.
“It’s nice to have extra robot eyes on the property,” she said. “There are indications this will be a great addition to the security team.”
Knightscope was founded in response to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and the 2013 deadly bomb attack near the finish line of the Boston race, according to the company’s Web site.
The company claims its robots are not intended to replace humans, but to help security and law enforcement be more effective.
The robots are equipped with a 360-degree camera, thermal imaging, automatic license plate recognition, directional microphones, proximity sensors and other technology.
Their “anomaly detection software” is designed to determine when there is a threat and alert appropriate authorities.
Knightscope has deployed its 1.5m-tall outdoor K5 robots, such as Steve and Rosie, and the smaller indoor K3 robots at malls and other businesses under a partnership with the security firms Securitas AB and Allied Universal.
Kightscope expects it can take a bite out of crime and reduce security costs as well.
It charges clients an average of US$7 per hour, according to its regulatory filing.
A small number of rivals are also entering the field.
Fellow Silicon Valley start-up Cobalt Robotics has begun delivering indoor security robots to businesses in California, primarily for security during nights and weekends.
The robots “have the computational intelligence of an autonomous car, but for indoor security,” said Travis Deyle, Cobalt’s cofounder and chief executive and a former engineer at Google X.
Deyle said the Cobalt robots can be deployed as a fleet in a building or complex and monitored at a control station.
“They are looking for things that shouldn’t be there, for leaks. When it detects something, it flags a human pilot,” Deyle said.
Deyle said the sector is “at the dawn” and poised for expansion, benefiting from the development of low-cost sensors, good wireless connectivity and advances in artificial intelligence.
“Everything is coming together” for the robot sector, he said. “We’re excited about where this can go.”
Others in the sector include Colorado-based Gamma 2 Robotics Inc, which aims at warehouses, data centers, manufacturing facilities and retail stores, and California-based SMP Robotics Corp, which makes outdoor robots and is marketing in Brazil, France, Japan, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“The economics of these things is becoming cheaper,” said J.P. Gownder, an analyst who follows robotics for Forrester Research Inc. “We’re going to see growth of purpose-built robots that can do specific tasks.”
Gownder said robots offer several advantages over human security guards.
“They don’t experience security guard fatigue,” he said. “Security guard work is challenging because, mentally, very little is happening until it happens. Artificial intelligence can make assessments [on threats] and flag them to a human operator.”
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) investment project in Arizona has progressed better than expected, but it still faces challenges such as water and labor shortages, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) said yesterday. Speaking with reporters after visiting TSMC’s Arizona hub and attending the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Maryland last week, Yeh said TSMC’s Arizona site turned a profit of NT$16.14 billion (US$514 million) last year in its first full year of mass production. “TSMC told me it was surprised by the smooth trial run of the first fab, which has left the company optimistic about the project’s outlook,”
RSS