Your School’s Next Security Guard May Be an AI-Enabled Robot

livemint.com:

When Lori Andrews attended her daughter’s graduation at Santa Fe High School, she spotted a 5-foot-10, 400-pound robot roaming the football field alongside the newest alumni. Andrews, a visual arts teacher at the school, said she initially thought the robot was taking photos of the graduates. She was taken aback when her husband described it as a police robot and she learned that it was providing 360-degree camera footage to the school security team.

“My reaction was, ‘Yuck,’" Andrews said. “What is it filming, what kind of camera is on it?" The New Mexico school district started a pilot program in mid-June with the robot, which patrols the multi-building campus grounds 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Amid growing concerns about gun violence and mass shootings in schools, several companies are starting to offer similar robots to schools across the country.

Few schools have deployed the machines thus far, primarily for campus surveillance. But they have the potential to do much more, including potentially confronting attackers and others who come onto campuses without permission. Using artificial intelligence, the robot in Santa Fe learns the school’s normal patterns of activity and detects individuals who are on campus after hours or are displaying aggressive behavior, said Andy Sanchez, who manages sales for Team 1st Technologies, the robot’s distributor in North America.

In the case of an active shooter or other threat, the robot could alert the security team, Sanchez said. It could move toward the intruder and transmit video footage that informs the officers’ course of action, he said. The robot isn’t armed but can confront intruders, and human security team members would be able to speak to the intruder through