Safety and security is one of the highest priorities for any person, establishment, city, or home. Though having a 24/7 security guard on duty is the obvious solution to security concerns, this often proves to be quite expensive, and maybe not always reliable. Not everyone can be trusted, after all.

So what’s better than entrusting your personal safety, or the security of your business, with a human security guard? Simple – you place your trust in robots, that’s what.

Security guards have every reason to be worried – for they might soon be out of a job if a company called Knighscope has anything to do with it.

Real-life Robocops

Knightscope’s K5 Autonomous Data Machine is a 5-foot-tall, 300-pound robot designed to stand guard in the wee hours of the night, leaving the strategic work of crimefighting to the authorities.

The K5 uses a combination of autonomy and predictive analytics to provide a commanding but friendly physical presence, whilst gathering important real-time, on-site data from whatever it’s supposed to be guarding.

It’s equipped with all the necessary security mod-cons, including a video camera, thermal imaging sensors, a laser range finder, radar, air quality sensors, a microphone, GPS, a night-vision camera, and biological, chemical and radiation detection systems.

“Data collected through these sensors is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowd-sourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern,” states Knightscope.

The K5 robots are intended to be deployed in “schools, shopping centers, hotels, auto dealerships, stadiums, casinos, law enforcement agencies, seaports, and airports.” We’ve no idea how much one of these K5 units might cost, but they’re intended for a countrywide rollout.

Secom’s security drones

This is not the first time we’ve seen technology used to improve security. If you thought that Amazon’s flying delivery drones were impressive, take a look at what Japanese firm Secom has developed – flying security drones that can defend a building or premises and automatically deploy themselves to identify and track intruders when they detects unauthorized entry.

Secom’s drones are able to hover in the air and identify intruders from a safe distance, and can do so without being detected, taking photos or videos as evidence. And even if the drone is detected, or if its communications are severed, the drone has been programmed to automatically fly away and land in a safe spot, away from the intruders.

FST21 biometric scanners

Aharon Farkash’s FST21 system uses multifactor biometric technology to identify people and spot potential threats based on facial recognition techniques. Described as a kind of ‘virtual doorman’, the system factors in the height, gait, length of limbs, voice characteristics, and other physical identifiers, plus behavioral characteristics such as how you walk, where you enter from, what time you typically arrive, and more, to identify anyone approaching a building or installation.

These parameters help FST21 to identify if the person entering the building is a authorized to do so, without any need for physical ID.  The FST21 can be placed in employee-only entrance ways and claims 99.7 percent accuracy, even when up to 100 people are approaching an entrance simultaneously.

Linda, the elderly helper

Safety is also an issue, especially when dealing with elderly people.  And this is the inspiration for Linda, a robot that sweeps the hallways to check if there are any seniors who have fallen.  Falling is one of the major hazards elderly people face when living alone, and Linda, the £25,000 robot, aims to respond to these types of situations immediately.

Linda can’t help the elderly up by itself, but it can quickly alert nurses or staff that a patient has fallen and needs immediate assistance.  Linda can also be used to deliver messages as well as assists patients to arrive at their appointments.  Linda is a learning robot, so it needs time to adjust to its environment so it can successfully determine whether someone needs assistance or is just lounging around on the floor.