Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says Yoshimi, they don't
Speaker 1: believe me, but you won't let those robots defeat me.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonvin Strickler and I'm Lauren foc Obam, and I
Speaker 1: was hoping that you would use Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots,
Speaker 1: uh quote for this particular episode from The Flaming Lips.
Speaker 1: I'm so pleased you recognized where that came from. I
Speaker 1: think this is like the third time that's happened in
Speaker 1: the entirety of the what like two or three years
Speaker 1: we've been recording. There was I think that when I
Speaker 1: used maps once you got that one. To be fair,
Speaker 1: my musical references are different than Lauren and Joe's musical references.
Speaker 1: That is generally true. Speaking of Joe, he is not
Speaker 1: with us today, as you probably guessed from the fact
Speaker 1: that he did not chime in. Joe McCormick, our third
Speaker 1: co host, will be very soon. In the meanwhile, if
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell, we're talking more about robots. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: mentioned in our last episode that we were having a
Speaker 1: duo robot conversation this week, and in fact, this topic
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about today, robot security guards,
Speaker 1: was a suggestion from Joe himself, and so we hope
Speaker 1: to do justice to the topic, Joe, and we look
Speaker 1: forward to you being back in the studio very soon.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about robots and security guards and and
Speaker 1: and robot security guards. Yes, because well, okay, we've talked
Speaker 1: many times on the show before about the amazing and
Speaker 1: sometimes strange ways in which robots are taking over traditionally
Speaker 1: human work, the type of human work that frankly just stinks, uh,
Speaker 1: you know it worked that's physically hard or repetitive, or
Speaker 1: dangerous or just boring. Yeah, and all of those things
Speaker 1: are detrimental to a person's sense of self worth. They
Speaker 1: can affect job satisfaction. Like if your job ends up
Speaker 1: devolving into something that is repetitively dangerous, obviously, that can
Speaker 1: have a profound effect on you stress, either physical or
Speaker 1: emotional or both. And even if it's just dull, if
Speaker 1: it's just boring and repetitive, then that can have an
Speaker 1: effect on you as well, a big negative impact. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And okay, so so security why is security this type
Speaker 1: of a field, this type of field in which we
Speaker 1: would potentially want to get robots into. Well. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: some some background factoids on security. According to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about a million human
Speaker 1: security guards employed around the United States as of Um.
Speaker 1: They generally make about twelve or thirteen bucks an now
Speaker 1: or on average patrolling and monitoring premises for suspicious behavior
Speaker 1: and crime. And they're important because even even in this
Speaker 1: world of ours that is increasingly rigged with security cameras everywhere,
Speaker 1: security guards, you know, having having a physical person with
Speaker 1: a physical presence can absolutely be a deterrent to crime, right,
Speaker 1: I mean a camera might deter a criminal, it might not.
Speaker 1: And if the criminal has decided to go ahead and
Speaker 1: commit said crime, perhaps they've got a mask on or something,
Speaker 1: they feel fairly confident that the camera's not going to
Speaker 1: be able to figure out their identity. What's the camera
Speaker 1: gonna do? Not not a whole lot, just going to
Speaker 1: record like it usually does the same thing it does
Speaker 1: every night, pinky yeah. Um. And furthermore, as we know
Speaker 1: from every heist movie ever, cameras are really easy to trick, uh,
Speaker 1: and very entertaining in the ways that you can come
Speaker 1: up with to do so. So okay, um, this job
Speaker 1: is important, but it is not an ideal job. It
Speaker 1: is it is dangerous by nature to put your soft
Speaker 1: and fleshy body in the way of a person who's
Speaker 1: desperate or determined enough to steal or destroy property and
Speaker 1: uh and furthermore, it can just be lonely and boring
Speaker 1: and patrolling an area over and over again isn't really fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's already fitting two of the three DS that
Speaker 1: are often cited as work that is ideal for robots
Speaker 1: and not for humans. That would be the dangerous and dull.
Speaker 1: But depending upon where you're doing your security gig, you
Speaker 1: might even hit the third D, which is dirty. Dirty
Speaker 1: meaning not just like, oh, that place is poorly maintained.
Speaker 1: But it may be that we're talking about security guards
Speaker 1: for areas like where there might be hazardous waste and
Speaker 1: you don't want people wandering into that place. But then
Speaker 1: you put a human being in danger by placing that
Speaker 1: person in close proximity with those hazardous materials. So what's
Speaker 1: the solution. Why not put some robots there? Robots? So
Speaker 1: here's the thing, Lauren went out and started looking at
Speaker 1: this crazy, crazy company that has a security robot that's
Speaker 1: that's been active for a couple of years now, particularly
Speaker 1: over in the Silicon Valley area. But recently we saw
Speaker 1: some news coming out because he has started to use
Speaker 1: one or maybe two of these robots at one of
Speaker 1: their lots. Right. Yeah, we were inspired by this news story,
Speaker 1: and so we wanted to to look in to this
Speaker 1: startup called night Scope, which is awesome name. Yeah. Night
Speaker 1: is in like the stabby like armored human kind of
Speaker 1: not not night the Holy Grail style. Yeah yeah, not
Speaker 1: the nighttime but the dark dark thing. Yeah. Okay. So
Speaker 1: so in this this startup in Mountain View, California, home
Speaker 1: of Google, home of Google and etcetera, UM started designing
Speaker 1: this robot that they called the K five and what
Speaker 1: they eventually brought to market is a five ft three
Speaker 1: inch three hundred pound shiny white doom egg. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: a good way of describing it. It is conical, not comical,
Speaker 1: although I guess depending on what happens to it, that
Speaker 1: also could be the case. But but conical in shape
Speaker 1: and uh three hundred pounds, I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is not a lightweight. Yeah, I mean, I am five
Speaker 1: foot three, y'all. For for for reference and and the idea. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that I could easily like ride one of these,
Speaker 1: like a like a doo meg pony, but but I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't. It might start making noise, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in the second Yeah, yeah, okay. So, so
Speaker 1: these things are outfitted with just a whole lot of sensors.
Speaker 1: You've got four high definition cameras in there that give
Speaker 1: it three D sixty degree vision. You've got a license
Speaker 1: plate recognition camera, four microphones, a thermal camera, a laser
Speaker 1: range finder GPS, and a weather sensor um or or
Speaker 1: an environment sensor really you should say that can monitor
Speaker 1: the temperature, the barometric pressure, and carbon dioxide levels in
Speaker 1: the area. So what all of this does is help
Speaker 1: it find its way around, watch any humans that are
Speaker 1: in the area, detect fires very important, uh huh um,
Speaker 1: watch for license plates for potential troublemakers like a recently
Speaker 1: fired employees or like a car that seems to be
Speaker 1: casing the joint something like that, and etcetera. Um it
Speaker 1: also has Wi Fi capacity so that it can communicate
Speaker 1: with fellow security bots and also with human personnel. Who
Speaker 1: are either remote or on the site, but not you know,
Speaker 1: like poking it right, not right, not not walking, not
Speaker 1: literally walking step by step with the robot um for furthermore,
Speaker 1: like like room bas they know when they're running out
Speaker 1: of juice and can go head back over to their
Speaker 1: recharge station. Now was interesting to me, beyond the technology here,
Speaker 1: which is already impressive, this idea, you know, it seems
Speaker 1: fairly comprehensive for your basic uh guarding type of duties.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about some surveillance, some recording patrolling.
Speaker 1: Is that nine scopes come up with a clever means
Speaker 1: for generating revenue. They're not like, obviously these robots have
Speaker 1: to be mega super expensive, but they're not. They're not
Speaker 1: just saying, hey, come look at our catalog and you
Speaker 1: see this dollar robot. How many would you like to order? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: they they have a rental business model. So uh so
Speaker 1: the official company line and how much they cost to
Speaker 1: rent is that you should totally speak with a sales
Speaker 1: representative to find out a plan that works best for you.
Speaker 1: But but news reports have listed it at about seven
Speaker 1: dollars per robot per hour, or about sixty dollars a
Speaker 1: year for seven surveillance. Right, So if you think, uh,
Speaker 1: seven dollars per hour for a robot, like that's probably
Speaker 1: less than what you would pay a human person, and
Speaker 1: in fact, according to averages, it is. So in that case,
Speaker 1: you've got night Scope having a sales pitch saying, well,
Speaker 1: if if your needs don't require an actual human being
Speaker 1: to be there all the time, all the time, then
Speaker 1: perhaps this robot would be a way that not only
Speaker 1: could you maintain security at your space, but you could
Speaker 1: save money in the process. Yeah, and uh and and
Speaker 1: under under this kind of concept, they are in use
Speaker 1: by a few tech companies around the Silicon Valley area,
Speaker 1: like like qual Common and Uber we mentioned, and they
Speaker 1: were certainly in use for a demonstration at Microsoft. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they actually Yeah. Well, what's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is when I started doing research on this, I
Speaker 1: keep coming up with articles from different time periods, like
Speaker 1: two years apart. They were like and every time it
Speaker 1: was like people had just discovered them right right, and
Speaker 1: I had known I had only seen them right now.
Speaker 1: So and I read a lot about robot I'm like,
Speaker 1: how did I miss this? They're glorious, to be fair,
Speaker 1: even people in Silicon Valley have missed it because every
Speaker 1: time there's another report about these robots being put in
Speaker 1: place by someone, it's like, this is amazing, it's brand new,
Speaker 1: that happened two years ago. There's a hashtag on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I don't anyway, Yeah, that is hashtag security robot. By
Speaker 1: the way, if you'd like to look it up and
Speaker 1: see some pictures and videos of it interacting with humans. Um,
Speaker 1: so let's say that you rent a few of these.
Speaker 1: How do you set it up? How does it know
Speaker 1: where to patrol? Well, you lead it around with a
Speaker 1: wireless controller to help it build out a basic map
Speaker 1: of its patrol roots. That makes sense because it sounds adorable.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't magically have the information stored in its data banks.
Speaker 1: It has to learn clearly, So yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like taking an employee on a tour, right exactly,
Speaker 1: just your giant metal employee. Well, and the other neat
Speaker 1: thing is because it's a machine, it doesn't forget unless
Speaker 1: its memory gets corrupted, so exactly will always remember where
Speaker 1: everything is. Yeah, and so, and by observing its surroundings,
Speaker 1: it starts to learn, you know, where it can and
Speaker 1: cannot roll because it is a rolling machine, walking machine.
Speaker 1: So you can defeat the security robot by with a
Speaker 1: short curb or yeah, exactly, just a just a slight ledge.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of got the classic dollic uh weakness.
Speaker 1: Although I know, I know that today they can fly,
Speaker 1: but back in the day they couldn't know. And and
Speaker 1: the first time that a Dollek said elevate and went
Speaker 1: up some stairs, like, I was terrified. I was genuinely upset.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert for first season of Dr Who reboot season nine.
Speaker 1: I guess of the technically, but whatever at any rate. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so you so you lead it around to to
Speaker 1: show it where it can cannot go. It will start
Speaker 1: building up its own personal database of its surroundings there.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, you can program in GPS coordinates to give
Speaker 1: it like an outline of like like a fence almost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's a very invisible fence that the
Speaker 1: robots not going to go beyond. All right, So all right,
Speaker 1: I've decided to rent my security my RoboCop and and
Speaker 1: he says, your move, creep. No wait, no, I put him.
Speaker 1: I put him out there, uh, patrolling the area that
Speaker 1: we have determined. Let's say that it detects something hinky
Speaker 1: is going on. What happens next? Not a hinky thing
Speaker 1: anything but a hanky thing. Um, it phones home, and
Speaker 1: by home, I mean whatever humans are on security team
Speaker 1: at that current moment um. You can have an alert
Speaker 1: different people during different shifts, and anyone who gets an
Speaker 1: alert can tune into a live stream of what the
Speaker 1: boat is seeing and hearing. Okay, So in other words,
Speaker 1: you whether it's you've got a team that's on site,
Speaker 1: but they are maybe they're overseeing the entire area. Like
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a really big area, you might
Speaker 1: have multiple robots to like on different floors of a
Speaker 1: building for example. Oh absolutely, Or you might even have
Speaker 1: I imagine like a like a larger security call center
Speaker 1: that that's servicing many different robots over different businesses. Right,
Speaker 1: that would make sense, and you would have certain teams
Speaker 1: assigned to specific robots. Therefore you would get that notification.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's say that, uh, we've got the
Speaker 1: security robot. Clearly, this is something that's meant to interact
Speaker 1: with human beings, whether it's someone that needs help or
Speaker 1: it's someone who's doing something they shouldn't be doing so,
Speaker 1: how how does the robot actually perform those interactions. Does
Speaker 1: it just like say like please don't do that? Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because because on on the ground level, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's it's going to phone home if it senses a problem.
Speaker 1: But um, but it's it's the humans in the in
Speaker 1: the security team that are going to actually choose what
Speaker 1: what happens, like basically the robot disengages. Essentially, the robot
Speaker 1: is programmed to not interact with humans. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's which is a strange feature because and I
Speaker 1: think that the team put really quite a lot of
Speaker 1: research and development into the physical design and the response
Speaker 1: design of this robot um too, to to make it
Speaker 1: this object that can interact when it has to. But
Speaker 1: that really isn't meant to It's not it's not interfering
Speaker 1: with someone. It's not it's not intimidating someone who is
Speaker 1: perhaps just they're under normal circumstances or perhaps they need
Speaker 1: help and they're coming to the robot to get help.
Speaker 1: And because the robot actually can can communicate back to yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a button for that. If you need help,
Speaker 1: you can push a button. It's essentially an emergency call button. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you don't want to design your robot to look like,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Queens and aren't Killbot two thousand
Speaker 1: with spinning saw blades all over. Yeah. Yeah, You're not
Speaker 1: going to go up to that kind of robot for help.
Speaker 1: I mean also, you gotta run from that robot screaming help. Yes. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: if if your if your kid wanders up to it,
Speaker 1: that's it's bad time. It's probably you don't want so.
Speaker 1: So you know, you wanted to make it intimidating enough
Speaker 1: to deter crime, but you don't want to make it unfriendly,
Speaker 1: cute enough that it doesn't scare people, but not so
Speaker 1: cute that people are twisted, lee willing in, or motivated
Speaker 1: to mess with it, as we have seen before in
Speaker 1: studies of human robot interaction. Uh remember that that hitchhiking robot,
Speaker 1: the one that successfully got all the way across Canada
Speaker 1: and then maybe two days into the United States before
Speaker 1: it was stolen and disassembled. Good, good job, Pennsylvania. That
Speaker 1: tells you so much about the different cultures of Canada
Speaker 1: and the United States. Or yeah, okay. There was also
Speaker 1: a study in Japan of how people would interact with
Speaker 1: a robot that was designed to to help the elderly
Speaker 1: shop Yeah, good good robot. Kids messed with it even
Speaker 1: and perhaps because it was saying things like somebody helped
Speaker 1: me or ouch that hurts. But I imagine in Japanese
Speaker 1: there is something tragically comical about a robot crying out
Speaker 1: saying somebody helped me, because you know, it's not really
Speaker 1: feeling anything. Yeah, it's not in pain, and that kind
Speaker 1: of makes it funny, and that kind of makes you
Speaker 1: want to mess with it more. I mean, I'm a softie,
Speaker 1: so I have a feeling that I would totally feel
Speaker 1: empathy for such a machine, but I can also see
Speaker 1: the perverse appeal of messing with it further. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's really interesting and probably terrible psycho oology at
Speaker 1: work here. Um So, so the team, it seems like
Speaker 1: what was aiming to make the K five like clearly
Speaker 1: inhuman like, like clearly a a robot and not attempting
Speaker 1: to to tug on your heart strings. Right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have big puppy dog eyes no no, no, no like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but also obviously autonomous and obviously intelligent. Um So, if
Speaker 1: it's approached by a human person, it will turn turn
Speaker 1: to watch you with all of its big front sensors
Speaker 1: because it kind of kind of has a front in
Speaker 1: the back. Um, if you corner it, it will stop moving.
Speaker 1: Just I'm pretty boring anyway, Why would you want to
Speaker 1: mess with me? I pounds? Where are you gonna come on?
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? Stop? Um? If you keep
Speaker 1: it cornered or if you start poking at it, it
Speaker 1: will chirp at you and and also phone home like
Speaker 1: like a low level alert like hey, And then you
Speaker 1: can actually have a person say something like hey, knock
Speaker 1: it off, we can see you. Yeah. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you if you try to mess with it, it'll sound
Speaker 1: an actual alarm like like not like a friendly like hey,
Speaker 1: more like a yeah, more like more like imagine the
Speaker 1: worst fire alarm you've heard at the loudest level, something
Speaker 1: akin to that, because I have seen uh it described
Speaker 1: as ear piercing Yes, uh so so yeah and and
Speaker 1: and then then that will send like an official alert
Speaker 1: to to the team managing it, and uh and the
Speaker 1: team managing it can I'm pretty sure, like I like
Speaker 1: I wasn't clear, but but it sounds like you think
Speaker 1: that this is the case that the team can like
Speaker 1: speak to you through the robot. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: have if you have a help button, I would imagine
Speaker 1: you have to have some sort of communication back or else.
Speaker 1: All I would do is have like an elevated sense
Speaker 1: of this button is doing nothing and we just beak
Speaker 1: behind the curtain. Laurenen Lauren wrote, and I recorded an
Speaker 1: episode of brain Stuff about placebo buttons. That's one case
Speaker 1: where you don't want a placebo button. No, No, that's
Speaker 1: emerge as they call. You want a real effective button. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be very, very upsetting. So my guess is,
Speaker 1: while I didn't see anything specifically, uh yeah, common sense
Speaker 1: would dictate there has to be some sort of speaker
Speaker 1: through which people could could talk. And I would imagine
Speaker 1: that you would that would become useful both in a
Speaker 1: security feature where you say, hi, we're you're under surveillance,
Speaker 1: don't do that, go away, or we we heard you
Speaker 1: were sending police or ambulance or whatever the emergency might
Speaker 1: be to your location right now, and we'll stay on
Speaker 1: the phone with you that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but but there's also a list of things that will
Speaker 1: will absolutely not do. Yeah, it won't physically interact with
Speaker 1: a person. It's not gonna it's not gonna roll up
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, back off, dude. I likely did
Speaker 1: the universal fronting like pull me back, coming back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not going to do that. Um. The closest you
Speaker 1: will get to any sort of physical interaction is that alarm,
Speaker 1: which is powerful enough for you to perhaps and sound
Speaker 1: is technically a physical phenomenon. So I guess by then
Speaker 1: you could say that's how it gets physical with you.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't like like, it doesn't have a little
Speaker 1: zapper that comes out allah r two D two. No,
Speaker 1: it's not weaponized in any way. It's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not more about that one in just a moment. It's
Speaker 1: not going to mess with you back. Um. And I'm
Speaker 1: delighted by by the existence of this thing, a little
Speaker 1: bit creeped out. Um. You know, the fact that it
Speaker 1: can look me right in my beady eyes. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. I
Speaker 1: also the fact that they one of the owners of
Speaker 1: the company or one of the creators of the robot,
Speaker 1: in one interview, said like it's the absolute minimum height
Speaker 1: that it could be in order to Um, to look
Speaker 1: around a parking lot, and I was like, absolute minimum.
Speaker 1: You can't be any shorter, Lauren, you will be lost
Speaker 1: in every parking lot. Um. Well, one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes me think about is that, Well, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and like you get into the discussion about, yes,
Speaker 1: this is taking a job that is not the greatest
Speaker 1: job for a human being, But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, there are human beings who are depending
Speaker 1: upon jobs like these in order to make a living.
Speaker 1: So there's there's two sides of that point. You would
Speaker 1: hope to be able to come up with a means,
Speaker 1: and it's beyond the scope of nights scope. It's beyond
Speaker 1: their scope to come up with the means, But you
Speaker 1: would hope you could come up with some way of
Speaker 1: getting those people who would otherwise be be out of
Speaker 1: a job into a different line of work or some
Speaker 1: other related field so that they could continue to make
Speaker 1: a living and contribute to society while also not being
Speaker 1: put in physical harm or in a situation that's going
Speaker 1: to be soul sapping because it's so dull and repetitive.
Speaker 1: The robot is not going to care, so so it's
Speaker 1: up to us to care. Yeah, I also I like
Speaker 1: the idea of a robot being able to to record everything,
Speaker 1: uh perfectly, like with video and audio. Uh. Once upon
Speaker 1: a time, Laren, before I worked at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: by about ten years, I had attempt job working for
Speaker 1: a security a private security firm. My job was to
Speaker 1: transcribe security officer reports, handwritten reports, so that they could
Speaker 1: be filed in the computer system. And that was not
Speaker 1: the best or most rewarding job I've ever had. The
Speaker 1: people who were working there were perfectly earnest and hard working,
Speaker 1: and I give all the credit to them. They were
Speaker 1: not writers, and sometimes deciphering what they were writing, not
Speaker 1: just like physically deciphering what a word was, but trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what they've meant. Um, I'll have to
Speaker 1: tell you the story of Cookie after this podcast. I
Speaker 1: tell it now, but it would be such a huge
Speaker 1: tangent that it would be a waste of time, so
Speaker 1: I'll tell you afterwards. But but you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that because the robot would be recording everything.
Speaker 1: So that of data and having a cont tenual stream
Speaker 1: of that data at a certain point becomes a little
Speaker 1: bit of a big data problem. Um, But it's probably
Speaker 1: a good problem that many companies would love to have, well,
Speaker 1: especially if you have to pursue a legal claim against someone,
Speaker 1: because you're not relying upon uh eyewitness account or a
Speaker 1: security person's account of what happened. For a stationary camera's
Speaker 1: footage right where you might not have a good view,
Speaker 1: you've got a three degree view, a mobile view, because
Speaker 1: they can move to wherever the problem is or somewhere
Speaker 1: where has a better line of sight of where a
Speaker 1: problem might be and have a recording of that thing
Speaker 1: that is incredibly valuable, well beyond like an eyewitness account,
Speaker 1: which we know is not entirely or even largely reliable
Speaker 1: or scientifically. Yeah. Absolutely, um. But but this, this night
Speaker 1: Scope K five is not the only security bot out there. No,
Speaker 1: I found a couple of others. There's the Avatar three
Speaker 1: security robot from Robotex. It's t e X for the
Speaker 1: into that word. But it's twenty four by fifteen point
Speaker 1: inches by six point fourteen inches, which is about sixty
Speaker 1: two by thirty nine by fifteen point six centimeters, so
Speaker 1: a little bit more than two ft long, a little
Speaker 1: bit more than a foot tall, and bigger than a
Speaker 1: bread box half Yeah, yeah, and uh it looks like
Speaker 1: a like a little tread robot, Like it's got treads
Speaker 1: to propel it, so don't we Well, it's got wheels,
Speaker 1: but wheels to turn the tread like so to treads
Speaker 1: kind of like a tank. It's got a little kind
Speaker 1: of glass dome on the top that has all the
Speaker 1: cameras and sensors on it, and a pull for an
Speaker 1: antenna to connect to WiFi. This one is under manual control.
Speaker 1: It's not intended to be autonomous, but it would allow
Speaker 1: someone to patrol an area without having to leave their
Speaker 1: they're nice air conditioned security room, for example. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you're to check out a situation that could potentially be dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's something where, you know, maybe someone
Speaker 1: spotted a box and you're like, well, let's get a
Speaker 1: closer look before we call in any authorities. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it may just be that, oh, someone accidentally set their
Speaker 1: stuff down while loading things into a car and then
Speaker 1: drop off for getting it. Or it could be that
Speaker 1: it's clearly a package of ramen. Yeah, then let's not
Speaker 1: let's call the swat team. Uh. So it's a little different,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not like the K five and that's
Speaker 1: the K Fi've been semi autonomous, mostly autonomous, really, But
Speaker 1: then you have the a mott a n bot from China. Now,
Speaker 1: this one is a little shorter and and and about
Speaker 1: half the weight of the K five. It's one point
Speaker 1: five meters tall, which is about five ft and ways
Speaker 1: seventy eights are about a hundred seventy two pounds. It's
Speaker 1: also cone shaped. In fact, it looks a lot like
Speaker 1: the K five, to the point where I start to
Speaker 1: wonder if this is one of those cases where one
Speaker 1: person maybe possibly copied down an idea of someone else had.
Speaker 1: It could very well be that these are parallel forms
Speaker 1: of development that have nothing in connection with each other.
Speaker 1: Happens frequently remarkably similar designs. However, um to the point
Speaker 1: where when I looked at the first picture, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: why do they have a picture of the K five
Speaker 1: on here? And then I was like, wait, that's not
Speaker 1: the K five. That's central and but um so uh.
Speaker 1: It is meant to patrol areas prone to civil unrest,
Speaker 1: according to Newsweek, at any rate, and it is autonomous,
Speaker 1: and that it can patrol an area, has obstacle avoidance technology,
Speaker 1: and it is able to go back to like a
Speaker 1: recharging point in charge itself. But it is also quote
Speaker 1: equipped with weapons, although to be fair, those weapons must
Speaker 1: be manually operated by someone. So it's not like the
Speaker 1: robot just decides to hit you. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: much better option. Someone controlling the robot has decided to
Speaker 1: hit I guess, depending upon who's controlling the robot. The weapon,
Speaker 1: by the way, is an electrically charged right controlled tools,
Speaker 1: so essentially like a stun gun or a cattle prod
Speaker 1: something along those lines. So it is like the zapper
Speaker 1: from R two D two popping out and giving someone
Speaker 1: a jolt of electricity. But if that ever does happen
Speaker 1: to you, if you are ever zapped by an and bot,
Speaker 1: it's because somebody controlling it doesn't like you or doesn't
Speaker 1: like what you're doing. It's not because the robot didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless the robots malfunctioning in some way. If you see
Speaker 1: an and butt in China and there's a little protrusion
Speaker 1: extending from it and sparks are coming off, just walk
Speaker 1: the other way, yeah, don't. You don't need to go
Speaker 1: in that direction anymore. There are other places they're China
Speaker 1: is big there's a lot of stuff to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so anyway, um, I thought that was interesting. But there
Speaker 1: are of course tons of robots that sort of fall
Speaker 1: into the spectrum of security. But but most of them
Speaker 1: are really not meant to be security robots. They are
Speaker 1: robots that have features on them that can be part
Speaker 1: of security system. Typically we're talking about cameras, so vacuum
Speaker 1: robots that happen to have a camera on them. While
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily need the camera for doing the vacuum job,
Speaker 1: but it allows you to go through an app and
Speaker 1: see what's going on in your house while the vacuum
Speaker 1: robot is active and it acts as sort of a
Speaker 1: surveillance camera. So really it's it's not so much a
Speaker 1: security robot. It's more like just a webcam. Well it's
Speaker 1: it's a robot that does Yeah, it's it's on the
Speaker 1: it's on the light end. It's in the spectrum. But
Speaker 1: this is just where we are. Now, where are we going?
Speaker 1: This is forward thinking think about the future. Uh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean okay, like we were saying earlier, this this
Speaker 1: could potentially if we if we follow this out into
Speaker 1: having full fledged security robots, we we were gonna have
Speaker 1: to deal with a with a with a job deficiency
Speaker 1: UM and and Night Scope says themselves that that robots
Speaker 1: like the K five are not intended to replace human
Speaker 1: security guards certainly not yet UM, but rather to keep
Speaker 1: them out of harms away as much as possible, and
Speaker 1: to arm them with better ADUTA about the environment that
Speaker 1: they're guarding. But but what if we do create robots
Speaker 1: that are sufficient enough to replace replace HUM human staff
Speaker 1: Like they they have the features that will allow them
Speaker 1: to do a security guards job without the need for
Speaker 1: the team team right right now, nothing to to make
Speaker 1: the decisions or to come out and zap people themselves.
Speaker 1: It would be tough, uh tough for many many reasons.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones that we've said it other episodes.
Speaker 1: There's some things that humans can do really well, like
Speaker 1: naturally well we you learn how to do it as
Speaker 1: a kid and you do it for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, and robots are not good at those things. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the K five isn't really great at staying
Speaker 1: upright on uneven ground. There was one or one article
Speaker 1: I read where they talked about as they were chatting
Speaker 1: with a representative in the background, they saw a K
Speaker 1: five get too close to the edge of like a
Speaker 1: curb and tilt over, and it doesn't have arms. It
Speaker 1: can't push itself back out. It can't. Yeah, so then
Speaker 1: you have to pick up a three pound robot and
Speaker 1: put it back on its base. Um, not necessarily easy
Speaker 1: to do. And the Darbo robot challenge that we talked
Speaker 1: about in a previous episode, Yeah, the best people in
Speaker 1: the world working on robots that can do a multitude
Speaker 1: of tasks are still pretty crap at making robots that
Speaker 1: can walk around. Yeah, like that. It's hard to make
Speaker 1: a robot that can climb stairs or open a door
Speaker 1: and step through things that that most people find you know,
Speaker 1: at least, if if not effortless, at least not so challenging.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, right, but there are robots that literally like
Speaker 1: you can watch that that video clip of the robot
Speaker 1: fails of the Darba challenge, and usually it's set to
Speaker 1: yakety sax, which makes hilarious and also sad at the
Speaker 1: same time. But it's it's crazy to see the little
Speaker 1: things that robots just find incredibly challenge JNG. And you
Speaker 1: start when you start to think about you realize, yeah,
Speaker 1: replicating what humans can do creating a machine that can
Speaker 1: operate within a human world, a world that we have shaped,
Speaker 1: that that we able bodied more or less average sized
Speaker 1: humans have shaped. Right, It is not easy to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: So Also we have to point out security guards would
Speaker 1: likely need at minimum the basic skills of a typical,
Speaker 1: able bodied human, and maybe more than what just a
Speaker 1: typical person would be capable of doing, depending upon the
Speaker 1: type of security guard and the type of gig right,
Speaker 1: and and plus in addition to that, if you don't
Speaker 1: have that team of people that it can phone home
Speaker 1: to in order to make decisions for it, you need
Speaker 1: the capacity to autonomously decide when, when someone's a threat,
Speaker 1: how much of a threat they are, and then how
Speaker 1: to stop them. Um. Computers only just learned how to
Speaker 1: identify cats. Yeah, I'm not sure how long it's going
Speaker 1: to take us to get to a design of of
Speaker 1: that level of decision makeing and intelligence until I can
Speaker 1: encounter a robot that not only knows what what cats are,
Speaker 1: but can tell you don't go see the show cats,
Speaker 1: it's really not that great, and furthermore, don't scritch its
Speaker 1: belly immediately. Cats. Yeah, there are a lot of like
Speaker 1: a lot of subtle things. I think exactly that if
Speaker 1: a robot isn't able to tell me what those are,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to trust it to be guarding something
Speaker 1: of supreme importance, especially in a way that is at
Speaker 1: least in a way that's not going to hurt somebody, Right,
Speaker 1: which brings us to the next point, the idea of
Speaker 1: security guards occasionally have to use some form of force
Speaker 1: in order to protect a person or protect property. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we would be talking about designing a robot to physically
Speaker 1: incapacitate humans, and instinctively that seems bad. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I mean at the very least, like potentially hazardous and litigious. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, like that goes back to our discussion from
Speaker 1: European Union and liability. Who's liable? Well, if you've got
Speaker 1: a security robot zapping people, I mean, even if they've
Speaker 1: done something wrong, there's there's some liability issues there, and
Speaker 1: it does seem to go against those laws of robotics
Speaker 1: we talked about in our last episode do not harm humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. It's right, there's number one. In
Speaker 1: fact number one that the rest of them are kind
Speaker 1: of all based on number one. So yeah, and there
Speaker 1: exactly so. And again these are laws that robots are
Speaker 1: born with. But these are the sort of ideas we've
Speaker 1: had of saying, if we're going to go down the
Speaker 1: road of building robots, we probably want to make sure
Speaker 1: they're not going to hurt us. That seems like a
Speaker 1: pretty wise thing to build into them. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: do think that that part of that, that intrinsic instinctive
Speaker 1: sense that we have about creating robots that could hurt
Speaker 1: people is based in science fiction. Um, is based in
Speaker 1: all of the fun exploding movies that we see where
Speaker 1: all Arnold Schwarzenegger has a metal skeleton and Any's stomping
Speaker 1: around and terrifying the living daylights out of everyone and
Speaker 1: all of that, all of that kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: that is so far away from being any kind of reality.
Speaker 1: Even if you do create a security robot that can
Speaker 1: zat people, UM, that's that that robot is not are Schwartzenegger. Uh,
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't even have an Austrian accent. I can't
Speaker 1: I can't be positive. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're up to in China. Kind of want them
Speaker 1: all to have it now. But but yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of a robot running a muck is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty unlikely. Yeah, really, yeah, I mean it's yeah,
Speaker 1: we we have a ways to go before that that
Speaker 1: becomes before Paul Paul McCartney butt is a reality. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but okay, so I don't know, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you're really just designing something like this to prevent crime,
Speaker 1: which is bad. Crime is bad. And if and if
Speaker 1: it's a robot that's freely good at making decisions and
Speaker 1: it definitely super never kills or maims anyone accidentally or
Speaker 1: on purpose, those would both be that would also fall
Speaker 1: into the realm of bad. Um. If all of that
Speaker 1: is true, then then it would be a good thing
Speaker 1: to have a security robot. Right, So we just need
Speaker 1: a robot that can have like a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: arms and it just very gently hugs the criminal and
Speaker 1: holds the criminal there like they're all all arms are soft,
Speaker 1: so as the criminal is struggling to get away, he
Speaker 1: or she is not actually hurting him or herself and
Speaker 1: yet can't get away because robot also weighs like seven pounds,
Speaker 1: just like just just a giant panda robot. Is what
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that kid that can hug a criminal into submission. Yes,
Speaker 1: I approve of this plan. I will pitch this series
Speaker 1: to sci Fi call us. Yeah, if we can get
Speaker 1: this on, we can get this on sci Fi. I
Speaker 1: think we got a future in uh in science fiction programming. No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean if if we can create this, this panda security,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's it means fewer humans being
Speaker 1: exposed to risky situations, which is always kind of one
Speaker 1: of those like like golden standards of how robots will
Speaker 1: do us good in the incredible future. Yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: definitely a place for it. The question is to what
Speaker 1: extent I think. I think the K five is a
Speaker 1: great implementation of this because it is taking what appears
Speaker 1: to be a very responsible approach to incorporating robots into
Speaker 1: the realm of of security, um without causing at least
Speaker 1: initially anyway, at least at least in no obvious way
Speaker 1: risk or danger. Yeah. So, uh, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: revisit this topic in like ten years and talk about
Speaker 1: remember our innocent days when the robots were being friendly
Speaker 1: and when we thought that panda robots were a great plan.
Speaker 1: The other day I went and by myself a Soil
Speaker 1: and Green bar and it was a little slow reaching
Speaker 1: for my money, and um, well that's why I got
Speaker 1: the cybernetic leg. Now coming up next, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the future Soiler Green. This episode brought to you
Speaker 1: by soil It. No, I mean that's I'm hoping that's
Speaker 1: not going to be the way this show isn't ten
Speaker 1: years but we'll find out. Um, maybe thought that would
Speaker 1: be a really interesting accent for you to spontaneously developed. Well,
Speaker 1: it may be one of those that's mandated by our
Speaker 1: robotic rewards. Like Jonathan, you have to have a weird
Speaker 1: cartoonish accent for the rest of your life, at least
Speaker 1: when you're on microphone. Um. Alright, So guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any comments about this episode, or robots in general,
Speaker 1: or even just some other topic that you want to know,
Speaker 1: like what is that going to be like in the future,
Speaker 1: right to us. Let us know what you think we
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