Knightscope | Innovation Day 2018
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 13/02/2018

Jeff Frick talks with the team at Knightscope to discuss the future of security.


These robots strive to fix nation’s security math problem


https://siliconangle.com/2018/02/14/robots-strive-fix-nations-security-math-problem-knightscope/


Vehicles that pull into the driveway at Knightscope Inc.’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California, often come to a dead stop. That’s because a robot, which looks something like R2-D2 of “Star Wars” fame, is positioned squarely at the entrance. Soon, the robot rolls quietly aside after a brief time assessing who is visiting the building. Once again, the security guard has done its job.

Knightscope is in the security business, manufacturing autonomous robots to guard a variety of environments, from wind farms and parking lots to shopping malls and storefronts. Since its founding in 2013, the company has been steadily expanding its customer base and refining a technology that includes data gathering, live streaming, artificial intelligence and a multi-sensor platform.

The motivation for starting a company like Knightscope was grounded in basic math. There are currently only 2 million guards and police officers to secure more than 300 million U.S. citizens in all 50 states, according to William Santana Li (pictured, left), chairman and chief executive officer at Knightscope.

“I don’t care what math you’re going to come up with, it doesn’t work,” Li said. “I’m sick and tired of waking up every morning and looking on my news feed to find some horrific thing that’s happened again. You need something that’s going to be a game changer, and this is that game changer.”

Li spoke with host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at Knightscope’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Mercedes Soria (pictured, center), vice president of software engineering at Knightscope, also spoke with Frick in a separate interview at the company’s headquarters. They discussed how the company overcame initial skepticism, a transformation of the human security guard model, “machines as a service,” successful use cases, and future plans to enhance the technology.

The robotics business has endured its share of skepticism over the years, and Knightscope was no exception. When Li was seeking to raise capital, the comments ranged from “Bill, you’re out of your mind” to “Security is not an investment thesis,” Li recalled.


Five years later, the company just closed $25 million in new funding from Bright Success Capital, Konica Minolta Inc. and 5,000 crowdsourced investors. Microsoft and Juniper Networks Inc. are customers, and the company has contracts spread across 14 states.

“Like most good entrepreneurs, we ignored everyone and just did what we said we were going to go do,” Li said.

What Knightscope set out to do was transform the security industry by creating intelligent robots that could perform many of the same tasks that human guards were handling. It was a market ripe for disruption, because the national annual turnover rate for private security firms was more than 100 percent, with some estimates going as high as 400 percent.

“The reason [robots] are more effective can be summarized in one point: Security guards don’t like to do their jobs,” explained Soria, who previously appeared in an interview on theCUBE . “It’s a job that’s very monotonous, very boring.”


Knightscope’s alternative is a business model that offers “machines as a service” for companies seeking to lower crime and protect people and property. For a one-year contract, customers receive a robot equipped for nearly any environment. The offering includes data transfer, data storage, analysis, user interface, hardware and software upgrades, and maintenance and service.

“It’s one throat to choke; we’re responsible,” said Li, who emphasized that the goal was to free up security personnel so they would have the freedom to do more critical tasks. “We need to be able to empower them, not add more workload to them.”


While the machine-driven service model sounds attractive, Knightscope depends on results, specific use cases where a tough situation improved. It’s analogous to a high-crime area where police departments will park a law enforcement vehicle in a visible place to ward off potential problems.

“There’s people that had lots of crime, and just by the machine being there, they [now] have nothing; they’ve got zero,” Soria said.

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