KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A sight previously thought to be science fiction is very real at a southeast Kansas City shopping center. Instead of a police officer, a security robot has been patrolling sidewalks and shoppers are taking notice.
Since Marshall the robot has been on the job, shoppers say the experiences have completely changed when they come to these stores. The robot can spend 23 hours a day monitoring the parking lot from all angles which gives people a new sense of protection and ease they don’t always have when out.
Marshall took over security at Brywood Centre in April. Before that, Karen White noticed a lot of trouble outside the shopping center.
“Sometimes it’d be concerning for your car like someone could take it or something,” White said.
Knowing now that Marshall is always watching, the risk of crime does not worry her or others as much.
“It made it very better, like you can’t be in the parking lot without seeing the robot,” White continued. “So, I think it scared them off.”
Statements to justify an orwellian mindset. Wouldn’t have thought otherwise.
I live in Kansas City. Somebody is going to do a drive by on that thing.
So do I, and yes, that could happen.
However, according to the article, it’s been around six months now and is having a positive effect.
Last time, it didn’t go so well for the robot:
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/7/17/15986042/dc-security-robot-k5-falls-into-water
Remember the movie “Chopping Mall” ?
The headline makes it sound like people are scared to report crimes because they don’t want to talk to RoboMallCop.
“very better”? Anyway…
It won’t last. Right now it’s new, but ultimately it will become an actual initiation ritual to knock it down, or perhaps a harder version to steal something out from under its nose. It doesn’t know who you are if you wear a mask (or stay out of its line or sight) and don’t carry something broadcasting your IP.
This looks like just security theater.
Meanwhile, aren’t cameras cheap? If let’s say hundreds of those were sprinkled around, maybe behind an opaque substance so you could also put up 10-100x more of them but 9/10ths being fake, and you swap them around occasionally, that might not be perfect either but could work better than a robot offering a nice, easy, fun target to play with, just like in video games. (Nobody ever enjoys video games these days though, do they?)
The robot can spend 23 hours a day monitoring the parking lot from all angles
Do they get a mandated one-hour break or something?
They feel like there is less crime, because they have bought into security theater.
* sees robot. looks around. *
Average idiot: Huh. No crime in sight. Guess it’s working.
Realistically, with the robot having been around now almost six months, I’m more willing to consider that the locals have noticed a difference in their experience going shopping. That’s more than enough time to notice the kind of changes the locals appear to have experienced since they stopped relying on the police.
I’m pretty sure that simply putting a picture of eyes in the scene reduces theft. People are emotional creatures , and if they feel like they’re being watched by someone who doesn’t approve of stealing, they’re more likely to refrain.
Bro this is an advert paid by the robot vendor… hence why we are going based on “feelz”
People still act like a fake news article is good faith behavior when it is just low quality engagement slop to drive somebody’s sales lol
Are you suggesting that the same amount of crime is happening but they’re deciding not to report it because there’s a robot there? That’s the measure they’re touting, the reduction in crime reports.
“He has a license plate reader, he has facial recognition, he can read IP addresses from your cell phone or watch,” Amanda Bellemere, owner of Brywood Shopping Centre, explained. “He knows who you are basically.”
he can read IP addresses from your cell phone or watch
(X) Doubt
They mean the Bluetooth MAC address. It’ll capture your phone’s and can tell who the manufacturer is but the rest of the address is randomized. That said, lots of watches/earbuds/assorted smart Bluetooth things aren’t randomized because manufacturers are lazy.
Does it have a stingray inside? wtf?
Depends on what your cell or watch is broadcasting publicly and if you are connected to the store wifi.
Yea, no, the most likely route is to pickup a MAC address and associate it with an existing assigned IP address (If that device is connected to the public WiFi, but who even does that these days lol), but modern day Android and iOS randomize MAC addresses on every connection these days by default.
And then you’d still need to correlate that to the physical world, most likely route would be detecting Bluetooth hostname, but it’s by no means guaranteed that the device hostname in the public WiFi DHCP table matches the BT one (phones can have different names for each). And again is dependent on the person being connected to store WiFi to begin with. Would also be entirely thwarted of a person’s BT is off which is highly likely
It’s possible, but would be a useless feature to develop and maintain as it would probably actually work out in the real world like maybe 30% of the time.
Unless they shoved a full stingray unit in it or something (extremely unlikely), this is just a statement from someone parroting a sales brochure that they didn’t entirely understand
Shoplifter: fuck you police toaster!
Police toaster: you jerk off to incest hentai.
Oh, a mobile surveillance unit, not Orwellian at all… next version will have guns and all data it collects will be sold to the highest bidder - thanks capitalism!
/s for the retarded
It was just a matter of time, we’ve had automated vacuum cleaners for ages now.
Putting guns on them is a bit harder, you definitely want a well-tested system for that. But cameras is pretty easy.
you definitely want a well-tested system for that.
Just slap an LLM on it. /s
Marshall conquer and destroy! Exterminate!
Scrolled too far to find this
This is not war this is pest control
Does kind of look like one, doesn’t it?
“Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”
TBH, I trust a security robot way, way more than I trust the KCPD at this point.
Our police are state-controlled and don’t seem to give a damn about locals, and they’ve shown themselves to be completely inept to stem the stream of burglaries and theft that’s occurred in the city over the past year. My own car got ripped off less than a year ago, forcing me to have to replace a window, but that’s small potatoes compared to what many others are experiencing.
I’ve made similar points in the past in discussions about robot soldiers going to war. There’s an upside to these things that people insist on overlooking; they follow their programming. If you program a robot soldier to never shoot at an ambulance, then it will never shoot at an ambulance even if it’s having a really bad day. Same here, if the security robot has been programmed never to leave the public sidewalk then it’ll never leave the public sidewalk.
It’s always possible for these sorts of things to be programed to do the wrong things, of course. But at least now we have the ability to audit that sort of thing.
