Indoor Security Robots

Travis Deyle and Erik Schluntz, former GoogleX and SpaceX engineers, Cofounders of Palo Alto-based  Cobalt Robotics Inc. recently introduced a new line of robot security guards for indoor use. The robots use the same kind of components you’d expect in a self-driving car to sense people and problems in a building and are designed to complement, not replace, human security guards.

Cobalt’s robo-guards pack 60 sensors These include lidar, ultrasound, depth sensors and cameras, as well as wide-angle day and night cameras. They also include microphones and two-way video chat screens that allow human security guards to remotely interact with a person who the robot approaches. RFID scanners on board can also check a person’s badge.

The robots look like gliding chess pieces, say a bishop with a tablet screen in place of a head in matte metallic blue or silver-white.

As it’s often quite expensive to hire enough human security guards to patrol every floor and corner of a large building. Cobalt’s Robots can help and be very useful for spaces like hospitals, data centers, warehouses, offices or schools.

Cobalt’s robots would scan the area for anomalies and let the security guards know where they’ve found anything that requires greater inspection. The robots can detect things like the sound of a window breaking, an apparent water leak, or the presence of people in the office.

The indoor use only robots, could be used in conjunction with a range of other stationary CCTV and security systems.

Cobalt’s plan is to build a robot with room for features and functionality to be added incrementally. Cobalt will gather a lot of data, and train their robot’s neural networks so that they can autonomously perform more security-related tasks over time.