Robots Are Invading Malls (and Sidewalks) Near You

At the upscale Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, people are taking selfies with a roving robot that looks like a cross between Wall-E's girlfriend and R2D2. It's actually a K5 robot security guard--a 300-pound, sensor-filled droid made by a startup called Knightscope that patrols the area and detects suspicious behavior. K5 is part of a small but growing number of human-scale mobile robots that are finding employment outside the confines of industrial settings like factories. They're invading consumer spaces including retail stores, hotels, and sidewalks in a quest to deliver services alongside human staff members for a fraction of the price of employing people to do a variety of typically unexciting tasks. The machines come with navigation capabilities and safety features to allow them to perform simple jobs autonomously without putting people at risk.