Hospital lobbies are an odd place to spend an afternoon. At any moment, the air hangs thick with collective anxiety and anticipation. It’s also incredibly busy. Clipboard-carrying healthcare workers in blue and purple smocks speed-walk their way through a maze of hallways at all hours of the day, narrowly weaving their way past confused visitors in desperate need of direction. But humans aren’t the only ones roaming the floor. Increasingly, these miniature medical cities are being constantly monitored by a four-foot-tall, egg-shaped fully-autonomous robot.
I sat watching one of these machines, a Knightscope K3 robot—which looks like a royalty free AI-interpretation of Star Wars’ R2D2—while polishing off a bag of chips at Houston Methodist’s downstairs lobby. Nine floors above me, one of my family members was fighting for his life, but in that moment I was distracted by an odd arcade-game-like humming sound emanating out of the white body and block-topped roaming robot. The K3 unit, which I would later learn was one of two units deployed in the hospital named “Watson and Holmes,” slowly drove itself across the lobby’s first floor, a panel of blue lights shining in its frontand a camera that resembled an eye. It maneuvers itself around an older man carefully striking calming notes on a grand piano before eventually returning the way it came and docks itself in a charging unit. These robots would become a familiar constant in the months to follow.
Knightscope is one of many security companies vying to place the self-driving security robots in just about any large open space imaginable. These machines, which act as a kind of mobile security camera, are already being deployed in malls, parking lots, government facilities, and sports stadiums across the world. They have also become a staple in hospitals and healthcare settings which have their own unique threats and must constantly strike a balance between security and open door accessibility.
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