Posted on 09/23/2023 12:31:19 PM PDT by CodeToad
The K5 is massive robot with no arms, no legs and four surveillance cameras.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) is implementing a new security measure at the Times Square subway station. It's deploying a security robot to patrol the premises, which authorities say is meant to "keep you safe." We're not talking about a RoboCop-like machine or any human-like biped robot — the K5, which was made by California-based company Knightscope, looks like a massive version of R2-D2. Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of privacy rights group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, has a less flattering description for it, though, and told The New York Times that it's like a "trash can on wheels."
K5 weighs 420 pounds and is equipped with four cameras that can record video but not audio. As you can guess from the image above, the machine also doesn't come with arms — it didn't quite ignore Mayor Eric Adams' attempt at making a heart. The robot will patrol the station from midnight until 6 AM throughout its trial run that's running over the next two months. But K5 won't be doing full patrols for a while, since it's spending its first two weeks mapping out the station and roaming only the main areas and not the platforms.
(Excerpt) Read more at engadget.com ...
NYC is leasing K5 for around $9 an hour for the next two months. The mayor sounds convinced that’s worth what the robot can do even though, as The Times notes, he recently ordered several agencies to reduce spending by 15 percent. “This is below minimum wage,” he said. “No bathroom breaks, no meal breaks.”
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So is the plan to replace police officers with it?
That thing will be in a jersey scrapyard in a week. I’m sure theres plenty of copper and other recyclable metals inside.
Theres gotta be at least something worth a cadylytic converter in there.
Better then hubcaps!
ROFL!
No kidding, right!
I am late to the party but I don’t give this robot much of a chance to survive. It is not a question on if the animals destroy it, only how long before they do.
I think that’s the model NYC will find they need based on field results.
What could possibly go wrong...
How long before its interactions are deemed racist and homophobic?
10,9,8,7,...
One of those large magnets used for dragging stuff out of rivers ought to scramble robocop’s eggs.
Magnets is a good one! Just plaster the suckers with magnets!
“I am late to the party but I don’t give this robot much of a chance to survive.”
I just imagine a graffitied robot, smashed to pieces, lying dead on the tracks sometime real soon. Condoms will probably somehow be involved.
“Scene 5: In international news. a fleet of Knightscope robots programmed to defend themselves from acts of vandalism have assassinated the Police Commissioner and are besieging City Hall, after city officials ordered the machines to be destroyed.”
ROFL!!! Nice!
Someone will steal it within hours. What a dumb idea to buy this thing.
Betcha the union is collecting dues from it
“Yes, I expect we will see the work of the graffiti vandals soon.”
Spray paint on the camera lenses and the thing is out of action. Then they’ll get to work.
Even before reading your comment, my guess was that it would survive for maybe 2 weeks.
Unless they assign a detail of human NYPD cops to guard it 24/7, which was my second guess.
If so, then 3 weeks before it breaks down and can't be fixed.
Probably not a bad idea for whoever sold this thing, and for whoever took the bribes to make NYPD buy this thing.
I just had an Epiphany, with all the wetbacks in NYC I’m pretty sure the News Eve is going to be a hoot for 24.
That was my thought, too.
NYC can always be counted on to be among the first to do something asinine.
alternatively, hack it. Undoubtedly, some moron gave it WiFi. Hack it and have it run amok at the next public meeting of the idiots in CityHall.
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