Its creators say the robot frees up a single human to patrol large outdoor areas, which would normally require significant staffing, but at a lower cost.
Amid labor shortage and increasing focus on security, security companies around the world are considering deploying robots on patrol duty.
In Europe, people living in Switzerland have been seeing an autonomous two-wheeled robot roaming around the country for the past six months.
The patrol bot, developed by a robotics start-up from ETH Zurich, Ascento, is acting as a guard for Swiss security firm Securitas AG.
Asento says its patrol robots are providing an extra layer of security and increasing operational efficiency at several test sites, including a Swiss railway depot.
It has foldable “legs” and wheels placed as “feet”. Its “head” has computers, batteries, sensors and cloud-based AI.
“It can go over flat terrain, it can go over obstacles, it can even go [up] A step or two and that’s because we use wheels and feet,” said Alessandro Mora, CEO and founder of Ascento.
Its thermal camera detects people and vehicles, while the 360° camera takes pictures of the surroundings. The robot can communicate via a live feed with a backup operator in a control center.
Ascento plans to further develop the bot to generate automated daily security reports.
robot for rent by the hour
The company says that its robot guards allow a single human security guard to efficiently cover large outdoor areas that would normally require significant manpower to patrol in person and cost less than a human guard.
Asento’s original idea was to develop a robot that could jump upwards, but discussions with industry revealed a demand for a larger, more robust robot.
“When you jump there is still a certain chance that things will go wrong. So the next version went big and didn’t jump ahead and with that it started this whole iteration,” Morra said.
He previously worked as a security guard while he was a student at ETH Zurich before the company closed.
“We decided to go into the security market because it is a place where it is really difficult to find people nowadays. They have to work long hours and they have to work in all weather conditions. We did this work ourselves and It’s really cruel.” Mora said.
“We wanted to help and our robots have been able to make the lives of these guards a lot easier,” he said.
In the future the robot will be hired by the hour to supplement a security company’s human guard team.
Sorry Comments are closed