The New York Police Department's robot, resembling a motionless Wall-E, was seen on Friday morning, gathering dust inside an empty storefront in New York City's busiest subway station. Its cameras were no longer scanning commuters in Times Square, and subway riders were no longer pressing its help button, if they ever had.

Figure 1. The Police Department assigned officers to chaperone the K5, which could not navigate stairs and spent much of its time plugged into a charger.

New York City has retired the robot, known as the Knightscope K5, from service inside the Times Square station. The Police Department had to assign officers to accompany the 5-foot-3-inch, 400-pound robot, which was unable to use stairs and faced potential abuse from commuters. “The K5 Knightscope has completed its pilot in the NYC subway system," a spokesman for the department said in an email. Figure 1 shows the police department assigned officers to chaperone the k5, which could not navigate stairs and spent much of its time plugged into a charger.

On Friday, the white contraption in Police Department livery sat among a pile of cardboard boxes, separated from the bustling commuters by a plate-glass window. Passersby often found the robot perplexing. “I thought it was a toy,” said Derek Dennis, 56, a signal engineer. It was a disappointing conclusion for an experiment that Mayor Eric Adams, a self-described tech enthusiast, had hoped would enhance safety and order in the subways, at a time when crime remained a significant concern for many New Yorkers.

The robot was intended to serve as an additional set of eyes in a subway system still operating below pre-pandemic ridership levels. Its presence was meant to deter crime, and its communication capabilities would have provided a means for distressed commuters to seek assistance. “Eventually, this is going to be part of the fabric of our subway system,” Mr. Adams had said in September, when he celebrated the robot's introduction in Times Square as part of a months-long pilot project costing the city only $9 an hour. “This is below minimum wage,” Mr. Adams noted. “No bathroom breaks. No meal breaks. This is a good investment.”

But on Friday, Jose Natera, 49, a construction worker, mentioned that he typically saw two police officers standing awkwardly next to the robot under Seventh Avenue. “Who was caring for whom?” he asked. “Was the robot caring for the police, or the police caring for the robot?” [1]

Kelvin Caines, a security officer, said he never saw the robot patrolling. Instead, it remained plugged into a charging station, and people took selfies with it. “They never allowed it to do anything,” he said. “They could have at least walked it down the hallway.”

The city has been leasing the robot from Knightscope, a company based in Mountain View, California. Last April, when the mayor first announced its arrival in New York, his office stated that the city had entered a seven-month contract with the company. This contract included three months for device preparation and four months for testing, all for the cost of $12,250. On Friday, Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the mayor, clarified that the K5 had actually been deployed for six months, ending in March, with its tenure at the Times Square station concluding as scheduled at the beginning of December. He mentioned that the robot worked a shift from midnight to 6 a.m.

The mayor had stated that the robot would not utilize facial recognition technology, but its introduction immediately raised concerns among civil libertarians. They warned that it could lead to a more dystopian surveillance society and further intrude upon the privacy of New Yorkers. Last year, the Legal Aid Society called for an investigation into the Police Department’s use of surveillance technology, arguing that it violated a city law requiring disclosure of how new technology is used and how data is protected. On Thursday, Shane Ferro, a staff lawyer with the group’s Digital Forensics Unit, said that the Adams administration was “distracted by false claims of high-tech solutions to age-old issues.”

The mayor has long been interested in innovative, if unconventional, technologies. While serving as Brooklyn borough president, he promoted a lasso-like device called BolaWrap designed to restrain emotionally unstable individuals. His friend Frank Carone had invested in the company, and Mr. Carone later served as Mr. Adams’s chief of staff in City Hall. Mr. Adams has also been a proponent of the city’s use of a robotic dog — the Digi dog — to assist emergency responders in situations involving potential bodily harm. The introduction of the K5 in New York City was marked by not one, but two media events. However, the robot’s recent retirement was met with little fanfare.

Earlier this week, Police Commissioner Edward Caban delivered his state of the department address at Cipriani in Manhattan, featuring a video montage showcasing various technological gadgets and machines officers have used over the past year on a large screen. The footage included dramatic scenes of drones, the Digi dog, and a gun capable of attaching electronic trackers to fleeing vehicles. Notably absent from the presentation was any mention of the K5.

Stacy Stephens, a spokesperson for Knightscope, declined to comment on the fate of the Police Department’s K5 on Friday. “Unfortunately, we are not authorized to speak about certain clients,” she said. “We do hope you understand.”

The company’s stock was trading at 59 cents a share on Thursday, down significantly from its initial public offering price of $16.29 on January 28, 2022. With major crimes decreasing and the mayor mandating budget cuts across city agencies, Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights group, suggested that people should question spending on gadgets. “I described it as a trash can on wheels, but it looks like the wheels aren’t even working at this point,” Mr. Cahn said.[2]

On Thursday evening, as rush hour crowds surged through the Times Square station, the robot sat silently in its brightly lit exile. Two police officers standing at the nearby turnstiles said that, although they were not regularly assigned to the station, they could not recall ever seeing the robot on patrol. One of the officers expressed relief that the robot had been put out of service. He did not want to be responsible for it.

Reference:

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/nyregion/nypd-subway-robot-retires.html
2. https://www.popsci.com/technology/nypd-retires-k5-subway-robot/

Cite this article:

Gokila G (2024), The NYPD Has Retired a Large, Egg-Shaped Subway Surveillance Robot—For the Time Being, AnaTechMaz, pp. 268