Quote:What weighs almost 400 pounds, stands roughly 5-foot-3, and, according to Mayor Eric Adams, will be a valuable tool in New York City’s law enforcement efforts?

To Mark Radlein, a restaurant manager, it looked like an oversized version of R2-D2, the droid from the “Star Wars” films. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to be,” he said as he took a picture of the object.

Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy and civil rights group, had a more dismissive view.

A “trash can on wheels,” he called it.

Its official name is K5, and its California-based maker, Knightscope, describes it as a “fully autonomous outdoor security robot.” It is currently used in hospitals, malls, airports, warehouses and casinos, and will soon be deployed in the Times Square subway station, the city’s busiest underground transit hub.

The robot, armed with four cameras, will record video but not audio. It will not employ facial recognition and — at a moment when the mayor is calling for vital city agencies to slash 5 percent of their budgets — the cost of leasing it averages out to about $9 per hour.

Full article: NY Times