What Was New York’s New Robocop?

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Jenaye Johnson: Hey there. Welcome back to the Scienceline podcast. I’m Jenaye Johnson, your host and the Multimedia Editor here at Scienceline.org. Make sure to subscribe to our show — whether that’s on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or another platform that you prefer using.

Jenaye Johnson: Okay, so today’s episode is gonna be a little bit quirky. We’re going to take a trip through New York subways with the assistance of Kohava Mendelsohn and a (now decommissioned) NYPD robocop. Stay tuned.

MENDELSOHN: Alright, it is 4:40 am. And I am on my way to find the robot. Here we go. 

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MENDELSOHN: Oh wow, there it is! To describe the whole robot, think EVA from WALL-E, much bigger, and half of it is blue, and there’s some blue glowing lights sort of around it. The subway station’s cold and gross. Lots of people walking around here, even at 5:40 am, so I bet this robot’s seen some pretty bad stuff. 

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Kohava Mendelsohn: Hi, I’m Kohava Mendelsohn, and I’m up before dawn to visit the new Robocop that’s patrolling the Times Square subway station in New York City. This is an automated robot that can move around the subway station and record video. The police say it’s here to record what’s going on and deter crime …but I wanted to see it for myself.

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Kohava Mendelsohn: Well it’s sort of just a hunk of plastic, but at the same time, like I can see the cameras, so like, I can feel like I’m being watched.  Basically, you walk in from Times Square 42nd street and 7th avenue entrance and it’s staring at you. 

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Kohava Mendelsohn: On September 22, 2023 this new robotic police officer was announced. It is currently in the middle of a two-month trial period, and it’s been controversial from the start... There have been news stories about it, people have dressed as the robot for Halloween. And even though the police say they’re not trying to spy on us — some New Yorkers are skeptical

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“At the press conference they said that it doesn’t use AI. But the website says that it does.”

“They may be really good for surveillance purposes, but I don’t see how they could actually stop crime.

“Whatcha think about the robot?”

“I hate that ***ing robot”

“You hate the robot?”

“Yeah.”

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Kohava Mendelsohn: So I wanted to find out for myself: What is this robot? What can it do? And how worried should we be?

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Kohava Mendelsohn: This Robocop in Times Square subway is actually called the K5. It is made by a company called Knightscope. So I started with them. 

SANTANA LI: My name is William Santana Li. I am the chairman and CEO of Knightscope. 

MENDELSOHN: Can you tell me a bit more about the specifics of your K5. What can it do? What is it? What’s its main purpose?

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SANTANA LI: So we thought we would combine Terminator with Robocop and a ChatGPT-enabled Skynet to kinda make sure we have the most efficient solution for big brother who we work for.

Kohava Mendelsohn: Wait, what??

SANTANA LI: Just kidding

SANTANA LI: So the idea here is to provide officers and guards really smart eyes, ears and their voice on the ground, and be able to do that in multiple locations at the same time.

Kohava Mendelsohn: In the context of Times Square subway station, this means the robot can be moving around and recording video. If you press a button on it, it can also call a real human police officer there and then. Otherwise, it’s moving by itself — not being remote-controlled.

MENDELSOHN: So can you talk about what specifically like, what can the robot do that a human can’t do?

SANTANA LI: So, technically speaking, the robot can’t sleep. The robot can’t get distracted. It doesn’t, like, forget things. It’s not texting. You know, I guess technically, it could text. 

SANTANA LI: But all kidding aside. A few things that the machines can do is provide you high definition, live streaming and recorded video at eye level. It can read, you know, several 100 license plates a minute. It can make pre-recorded announcements like, ‘Hey, it’s 2:22 in the morning. You’re trespassing.’ Or, you know, ‘Happy Father’s Day, or you know it’s 12:00, or you know, the Mall is closing. The machine can also treat your mobile device as if it was a license plate. 

Kohava Mendelsohn: This feature —  treating your phone as a license plate — is something Knightscope calls this automatic signal detection, a way of identifying people based on just signals from their mobile phone. In theory, the police could create a list of devices they wanted tracked, and the K5 could send them alerts if it picked up a signal from one of those devices. The police have responded to my request for comment saying “The K5 is NOT tracking cellphones,” but Mr. Li admits it is a possible feature.  And the K5 also has the capability to use facial recognition software, but again it doesn’t have to do it and that feature is not being used. The police have specifically and repeatedly said that it will not record audio, and it will not use facial recognition.

Kohava Mendelsohn: So what is the purpose of the K5 for the NYPD? It seems like they are currently using it to record video and monitor crimes if they are taking place, like a really fancy security camera.

Kohava Mendelsohn: Wouldn’t you be less likely to commit a crime if a giant robot was watching you? Hell, I’d be less likely to pick my nose. 

Kohava Mendelsohn: But how does the K5 function? What are all the things going on inside? How does it understand what’s going on around it in the world?

SANTANA LI: We use lidar, sonars, wheel encoders, IMUs and a bunch of crazy software for the machine to dynamically create a map and then find itself in the map that it just created. 

Kohava Mendelsohn: Woah woah woah that was a lot of fancy words! Time to find someone who can understand them. This is Animesh Garg.

GARG: I am a professor of AI and Robotics at the Joint Institute of Technology. And previously, I’ve been at the University of Toronto, Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Kohava Mendelsohn: So the K5 uses sensors like LIDAR and SONAR to move around, but also it uses cameras, with the full color spectrum from red to green to blue or, as they call it, RGB. But how does the robot use these sensors to move around from point A to point B?

GARG: If I’m trying to do point A to B planning, I need to be able to predict. This prediction is done through a combination of Perception sensors. So I might use RGB-based input, so standard cameras, or a depth camera. And fuse them into a 3D scene. And now I can classify within that 3D scene which of the points or which of the locations are where I can drive and which of the locations would be considered as, let’s say, obstacles.

Kohava Mendelsohn: It’s kind of like a video game, where as you explore the world you have a minimap on the corner of your screen showing what you’ve discovered so far. As the K5 explores its world with 3D sensors, it makes its own map of the environment, so it knows where it is safe to move. 

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Kohava Mendelsohn: So now we know how it works, but should we be worried about it video taping us? Who has access to all that data? According to Knightscope, they contractually cannot access the videos the robot is taking, only the police can. 

Kohava Mendelsohn: Just like a subway security camera. Those are already all over, and more are being added. There were two thousand cameras installed in New York subway stations just in the year 2021. 

Kohava Mendelsohn: So how you feel about that data being tracked probably depends on how you feel about the police… who do have a record of collecting data about us without telling us, according to an investigation by Vox in 2021.

GARG: I am a firm believer, and this is my personal opinion, any entity — the government or a private entity — if they are recording data, then the users should be made aware of that in a manner that is not too obfuscated. So not necessarily in the fine print, but front and center.

Kohava Mendelsohn: So that’s that. The Robocop in the New York transit system certainly looks scary, but it doesn’t have facial recognition and it can’t record audio. It’s made up of a bunch of sensors so it knows what’s going on around it, and it’s going around, taking a 360 degree video of its surroundings and saving that so the police can view it at a later time. It’s not out to get us, but it does make a pretty cool Halloween costume. 

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Kohava Mendelsohn: Thank you to William Santana Li and Animesh Garg for their interviews, Blythe Terrel for editing, and Blue.Sessions for providing the background music. This was an introduction to New York City’s Robocop, with me, Kohava Mendelsohn. Thanks for listening.

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Jenaye Johnson: And that wraps it up. Thanks for listening! Feel free to share this story with family or friends or anyone you think might be interested. The Scienceline podcast is available on every major platform, so be sure to subscribe wherever you listen. Oh, and if you’d like, maybe give us a rating or review. It helps other people to find our show.

Jenaye Johnson: Scienceline is a production of NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Our theme music is by Jahzzar at the Free Music Archive. And for more information, please visit us at Scienceline.org or shoot us an email at scienceline@gmail.com. See you next time!

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