Robot security guards now patrolling Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus

A California company is hoping to revolutionize the security business with autonomous robots.

The KnightscopeK5is one of fourdronesnow patrolling Microsoft's Silicon Valley Campus.

Matt Stambaugh, theCalgary Eyeopener's science and technology columnist, spoke about how the fivefeet tallrobots learn.

"You take them to an area, apparently an operator has to walk around the perimeterwhere they're supposed to patrol once, then they go about learning their environments," said Stambaugh."What they're using is a variety of different sensors essentially to take the role of what a lot of private security contractors do today."

According to Stambaugh, the robots are capable of detecting anomalies and making decisions.

"It's not quite as advanced aswhat Google is doing with their self-driving car, but they've got different sensors on board to make a map of the area and then they've got code on board to decide what is something that should be reported back."

"They've got thermal imaging if you need.They've gotchemical sensors, licence plate recognition software [and]facial recognition software,"said Stambaugh. "It looks kind of like a large Roomba.And so instead of looking for dust bunnies it's looking for, you know, criminals."

K5s to hit the market in 2015

According to Stambaugh, the robots will be hitting the marketstarting 2015.

"What the companyKnightscopeis trying to do is to lease these out on a per-hour basis," said Stambaugh. "So $6.25 an hour they'll lease you one of these K5sand that's about half the price of the averagesecurity guard."

There are many advantages to a robot over a human patrol.

"They'll work triple shift, 24 hours a day. The battery is supposed to last around a day and when it runs out they go back to a charging carpet and in 20 minutes they are charged up again."

Stambaughalso saidthe robots do not have any weapons, but thatmay change in the future.

"Basically what it's doing is calling back to a manned response centre if something is going wrong," he said.