Knightscope makes what they call autonomous data machines.
"Designed for security and surveillance,
these robots autonomously monitor
indoor and outdoor areas for potential threats."
Hollywood, they portray robots
and artificial intelligence in a very specific way
to get audiences to come in and
watch their shows.
Well, the reality of it is that
these are not Terminator and these are not R2D2.
But the capabilities that they have now,
the ability to provide real-time,
actionable intelligence is incredible.
In high school, I remember sitting in my counselor's office
and her telling me, "Hey,
have you ever thought about being a police officer?"
And I literally told her there's no way
I would ever be a police officer.
Fast forward many years to 1998,
that's when I started my career
as an actual police officer
in the suburbs of Dallas.
As a police officer,
I'm relegated to the real estate on my body
to carry technology. So we all talk about
the bat belt and all the equipment,
and nowadays, the vests that house
all these different things, the cameras and tasers.
But, I always had a smartphone on me.
Intelligence and data is power.
Having the ability to know what's going on
around you at any given time
will affect an outcome in a positive way,
could potentially. So, the thought was
if we were able to provide
actionable intelligence
to a security guard or
a law enforcement officer
immediately, and in real time,
we could give them the tools that they need
to make smarter, safer and faster decisions.
We're dealing with some of the top technologies on the planet.
Artificial intelligence, self driving technology, robotics,
software engineering. All those things have
to come together
and work fluidly. We now have
a backlog of six months' worth of
contracts that now we need to deploy
and we're super excited about. It's one of those
problems that every young company
is excited to have,
but it's also terrifying as well, because we know
we need to execute on it.
These are American-made machines, and we build
them right here in Silicon Valley.
That's very important to us to be able to have
that American flag on every single one
of robots that leaves our building.
"This robot might be happy to take a selfie
with you, but it has a much more serious side."
The ability to do concealed weapon detection
to actually know that someone's carrying it, a firearm
in an area where there shouldn't be.
Knightscope's ultimate goal is to make the United States of America
the safest country on the planet.
9/11 occurred, and
my co founder, Bill Lee, who's our chairman and CEO,
he is a native New Yorker,
and that affected him personally.
For me, I was an officer on 9/11. I literally
watched the second plane hit the tower
from the police department as it was happening.
Fast forward to Sandy Hook
and then subsequently the Boston bombings.
Those are things that inspired us.
It's not just me with a law enforcement background.
I have other people in the team with law enforcement,
with military backgrounds, people who understand being
able to secure our country. That's very important
to us, and to the love of country, to be
able to provide something that is going
to help keep us safe.
We actually have several clients who have
been using the technology for many years.
One in particular is a large healthcare network.
Between January and September of 2016,
they were averaging two criminal activities a week.
We deployed our robots,
and our technologies there in September of 2016.
And between then and still today,
zero.
Average of two to zero.
"It also has a distress button, which is located here..."
One of the most exciting things as of recent
history is
we actually deployed our first robot,
being utilized by a police department
that has police graphics on it and
thats in Huntington Park, California.
It's nice coming full circle. Just thinking
back of the tools that we're
providing on our bodies and
how we can
through technology, use the robots
as an extension of that to bring
that information into them,
that's really exciting.