New Yorkers can say goodbye, for now, to the robots used by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to patrol the Times Square subway station. Nightscope K5 is a 400-pound machine that appears to be a sibling to R2-D2 and was one of Mayor Eric Adams' high-tech experiments in New York City. It was piloted last year, ostensibly to keep commuters safe, but it had no real features to help in situations that had to be dealt with in the field. “The K5 Nightscope has completed a trial run on the New York City subway system,” a spokesperson for the agency said. new york times.
The K5 has a camera that can record video and a button to press to contact a real agent. The word “patrol” may be an exaggeration, but during the trial run, which lasted two months, the station was patrolled from midnight until 6 a.m. This machine has no arms and cannot go up or down stairs.a commuter said times They were usually accompanied by several police officers and seemed to be connected most of the time, he said.
New York State leased K5 for about $9 an hour during a pilot phase that ended in December. “This is less than minimum wage,” Adams said when announcing the deployment of robots to the Times Square station. “There are no bathroom breaks, no food breaks.” At the time, privacy advocates worried that the machines could eventually be equipped with facial recognition and other surveillance tools. Unless, of course, city officials decide to continue leasing K5 for other purposes, they no longer need to worry about K5 being used for surveillance of New York City. A Nightscope spokesperson said: times The company said it is “not authorized to speak about specific customers,” which likely includes the New York City government.
