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Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net)
Fusion's Kashmir Hill is reporting about a five-foot-tall, white, egg-shaped robot that one can find at the company's inspection lot near Mission Bay in San Francisco. The K5 robot is a stand-in for a human security guard, and it sports multiple high-definition cameras for 360-degree vision, a thermal camera, a laser rangefinder, a weather sensor, a license-plate recognition camera, four microphones, and person recognition capabilities. The report adds:If someone suspicious comes into the lot, or starts messing with a car, the robot can't tase them or break out any weapons. Instead the robot can set off an alarm, send a signal to human security personnel, and record everything that person does to be used against them later by police. Customers of Knightscope, the company that manufactures the aforementioned robot don't buy the machines. They rent them, usually two at a time, so one can charge its battery while the other patrols. The cost is $7 an hour. "For the cost of a single-shift security guard, you get a machine that will patrol for 24 hours a day 7 days a week," said Stephens, citing wages of $25 to $35 hour for a human security guard.
Putting aside "we-will-all-be-replaced-by-robots-soon", this is actually a good idea, and the company making them has the right strategy; much better to charge an hourly rent instead of a huge upfront fee!
Apart from the employment issue, I can see a lot of benefits, robots aren't racist and robots aren't rude, and I assume security to actually be better with the robots in place.
Can't do stairs
1. wait for SF to deploy these in all major parking locations
2. wait a few years for snow....http://snowbrains.com/san-francisco-ca-rarely-see-snow/
3. break into everything while the useless 400 sensor robot can't get to or from its charging station
4. profit
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
That day when someone steals the security robot...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Probably contrasting the bill rate vs take home pay. The latter is what the guard gets, the former is what the contracting company gets, meaning it's all the money for benefits, taxes, and profit etc padded on to that. So yes, $25-35, though the guard actually only probably gets around $10 of that or so.
Doubtful. If CCTV type systems and bait cars don't stop punks from doing it now, this won't. If anything, they'll likely find it as a tempting target to attack, especially since it's an inanimate object and the crime of attacking/destroying/defacing/etc will be significantly lower then against a person. On the other hand, those punks won't try it with a real person or people around. The why is easy to figure out too, people are unpredictable, thus they could simply have the shit beaten out of them or in the worst case get shot. And the penalties for attacking a person are much higher.
Even dumb criminals have self preservation instincts.
Om, nomnomnom...
The real cost of employment is closer to 3-4 times what the hourly employee makes. People complain about Minimum Wage jobs, have no idea that employing a person costs that much.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Destroying a giant robot alarm system which is bristling with cameras - a perfect strategy for crimes of subtlety.
That's the part that has me confused.
Okay, so this is basically a mobile camera with enough intelligence to note when something is happening that is out of the ordinary. Not a bad thing.
But then this comes:
If someone suspicious comes into the lot, or starts messing with a car [...] the robot can set off an alarm, send a signal to human security personnel [...]
So, I still need to pay for a human being to sit around and wait for the robot to signal that something bad is happening.
I suppose I can hire one security guard to "monitor" two or three areas (i.e., wait around for the robot to signal that something suspicious may be happening) and then go check it out, rather than hiring 2 or 3 security guards.
So this seems like it makes more sense for larger areas where one security guard wouldn't be enough to patrol.
until the thieves steal the robot? I mean, faraday cage the thing, bring it to a metal warehouse, dismantle and sell it's parts. Easily enough done and at the same time you can be stealing the cars in the lot the robot used to patrol.
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
Instead the robot can set off an alarm
Which is known as a deterrent. A quite good one at that.
As for better than a security guard, that remains to be seen. But between an overweight, mouth drooler with a can of pepper spray meandering a parking lot and a mobile recording device capable of blaring noise, flashing lights and bringing lots of unwanted attention, the latter seems better to me.
Just for starters, the latter has a perfect recall of the preceding events. Good luck getting the height or sex or anything useful from the security guards story.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
And yet CCTV has been effective in deterring crime.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The criminals who are most likely to stay out of jail ...
Work in the financial industry.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
part it out on ebay
love is just extroverted narcissism
An alarm might be a deterrent, but only because of the unknowns. If a human guard raised the alarm, the burglar doesn't know if the guard is armed, or how many more guards will arrive, or if they are armed as well. With this weeble bot, a lot of those unknowns go out the window. We already know that the bot is not armed. If a company has one of these bots, then it means they wanted to save money on real human guards, so there will likely be quite a delay before any humans arrive after hearing the alarm.
I would gamble that criminals would TARGET places with these bots more than places with human guards.
I was able to find the Faraday Net Cannon for cheap on Amazon, but have you priced rental trucks lately? Totally impractical.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
A chicken with a badge would also cost less than a human security guard. Cost alone is not a great stat to compare competing solutions. How well does the robot do it's job compared to a human guard?
I'm sorry. I assumed 'beat it into parts' was hyperbole. Just what exactly are you planning on using to beat it into parts? Assuming the hard drive is reasonably secured you aren't going to be 'long gone' by the time security shows up. You're still going to be smashing it trying to get at the hard drive when they show up. Sure, you know what a hard drive looks like, but in which of the battleship grey 1/4" tempered steel boxes is it in? Going to grab them all? Well, if I were to design the system I would probably have a lot of that stuff attached together with some pretty thick and heavy duty cable, the kind you use to keep people from stealing stuff, so you're going to have to haul a significant portion of the 300 lbs robot with you and then hope it doesn't have any sort of lo-jack system.
And incidentally, while you are doing all of this you are still in a parking garage being monitored by other cameras. How are you getting it out of there? Loading it up in your truck? Would that be the one that had its license plate visible when you drove into the garage? And that's the same one you plan on using to drive out of the garage after the alert goes off? Gee. I wonder where the human guards should go to head you off.
This isn't meant to be a statement of 'it's impossible! You will never do it!' I am sure all of these hurdles can eventually be surmounted. What it is meant to be is a statement of 'that's probably more work than you're thinking'.
Remember, to each and every complex problem there is inevitably a simple and easy answer, and it is usually wrong.
$25-$35 for a security guard?
Last time I checked, security guards were paid pretty much minimum wage, with armed security not a great deal more.
Note that this ISN'T even a security guard, this is simply a mobile alarm system that will call security - which you'd still have to have on hand. Sure, it would be a force multiplier, but I also see this silly thing being easily gamed.
-Styopa
That is, I think, the entire point.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
When I saw the title, I was hoping for an ED-209.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The problem is the penalty for the crime is not enough.
Not true. Severity of punishment has modest value as a deterrence. Much more important is probability of getting caught.
3 strikes and a life sentence
Several states, including California, implemented 3 strikes laws during the 1990s. In the following decades, it had no effect on crime rates compared to states that did not implement such laws.
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, much much higher than China, Russia, Iran, etc. Our prison system is enormously expensive, and is mostly a waste of resources.
Accountant here. No the burden rate for an hourly employee is NOT "3-4X" their take home pay. Generally speaking it is around a 50% markup of their gross (pre tax) salary. So if you pay someone $10/hour their real cost is probably $13-18 depending on the benefits offered and insurance costs.
I have no use for one, but something about the thing makes me want to throw a conductive blanket over it to muffle its RF output, then throw the helpless thing in the back of a pickup truck and whisk it away.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Several states, including California, implemented 3 strikes laws during the 1990s. In the following decades, it had no effect on crime rates compared to states that did not implement such laws.
It's funny one isn't it? The natural reaction against crime is to punish or lock up the offender, especially in the US. But if you are interested in reducing crime (rather than punishing people), then rehabilitation results in much better outcomes overall
But tough-on-crime makes for better political campaigns, so we end up in the vicious cycle.
Crime is currently at historic lows in America. I bet everyone didn't know that, what with all the scaremongering. One of the big reasons why is all the criminals are locked up. The more you know!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!