
Cobalt Robotics Raises $13M from Sequoia for Indoor Security Robots - beambot
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/30/cobalt-raises-more-than-16-million-to-bring-security-robots-to-the-office.html?ref=hn
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compumike
I recently had the chance to see one of Cobalt's robots on patrol at night in
an office in San Francisco. It looks quite slick, like how Apple might have
designed it. Well done.

The fixed hardware costs and limited capabilities have long kept robotics in
the hands of academia and manufacturing. As those cost curves move, we're now
seeing viable business models in non-industrial B2B robotics, like this one. I
expect the self-driving car growth will also push down the costs of LIDARs and
other critical enabling technologies that will eventually lead us toward
practical consumer robotics.

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fludlight
Hacking these will be the new frontier in industrial espionage. Imagine the
possibilities: listen to employee conversations, video access to sensitive
areas including computer screens, property damage, personal injury...

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uncoder0
Yeah if anything this takes the attack surface and multiplies it quite a bit.
Imagine if one could sneak something into a firmware update for all the Cobalt
bots.

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aylons
First of all, very nice engineering in here. Well designed, appealing look,
functional and has a good feature set.

However, how is this bot better than current CCTV with some checkpoints, badge
readers and all the same features that we current have? A CCTV guarantees
coverage by design, while this robot has does sweeps that allows intruders and
all to evade detection.

Of course, we have security guards walking around buildings with checkpoints,
but they are usually added to CCTV, because people walking around is more of a
deterrent than a recording.

I saw in the end of the article the idea that it would be less expensive than
a CCTV, but they do not give a price point and I really doubt. Even high-
quality colored cameras with infrared sensitivity are cheap as hell nowadays.
Most of the cost is in the back-end services (monitoring and recording), and
unless the company is working on improving this (the text does not mention), I
don't see how they would compete.

These is a sincere question - the company is obviously doing at least somewhat
well and it's not my intention to be the next BrandonM. As a hardware
engineer, I would even work for them, as the project seems really cool and
there are lots of room for new ideas. But it looks very expensive and this is
a crowded, cost-oriented market.

Edit: Also, is it common in the US (I'm Brazilian) for security personnel to
walk inside offices while people are working, as depicted in this video? Here
I only see this during off-hours.

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beambot
Cobalt founder here.

I was initially skeptical... but Cobalt was a problem-centric creation. We
started the company after speaking with security practitioners who were
clamoring for after-hours coverage & insisted that cameras & access control
just couldn't provide the responsiveness & customer service that their
organizations demanded. CCTV cameras are great for entry and egress. But they
suffer from a host of issues: extremely costly to install, upgrade, maintain,
and monitor (upto $75/mo/stream); are seldomly upgraded (analog cameras are
still common!); huge bandwidth consumption to cover large areas; provide no
real-time responsiveness; and are only used after the fact for investigations.
But guards were just so expensive -- so companies just left major gaps in
their security coverage.

We see the robots as a compliment to existing static infrastructure, where the
systems automatically communicate & work together. In fact, some of these
systems are built into the robots too: cameras (obviously), access control
badge reader, and a heck of a lot of compute & other sensors. The concept is
quite simple: Mobility is becoming increasingly cheap, and enables you to
reposition your most-capable resources to the right place at right time. It's
the most capable edge sensing & computation feasible, and the human-in-the-
loop lets you provide a host of other capabilities too. In effect, we're
allowing a single, remote person to be in _many_ locations at once --
particularly during the low-utilization after hours (nights, weekends, &
holidays). It's similar to the force multiplication that CCTV provided decades
ago!

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jaclaz
I am completely failing to see the "security" (as in "security guard").

It seems a clearly smart way to "keep an eye" over an area, but more like in
"surveillance" than "security".

I mean - pardon me if I am still skeptical:

1) how would the robot deal with (locked) doors (or even with doors that need
to be opened through a pushbar or handle)?

2) What happens in a multi-storey facility? (I mean can it go up and down
stairs or use a normal lift)?

3) Is the communication protocol between the robot and the control unjammable
and uninterceptable?

4) How - besides sending an alarm to a human-presided control center with an
intervention time (I presume) in the order of magnitude of several minutes -
can it deal with an intruder?

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thedogeye
Security guards also don't deal with intruders. They call the police.

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jaclaz
>Security guards also don't deal with intruders. They call the police.

Well, it depends on where (which country/state) and on the "kind" of security
guard.

I was thinking of the kind that carry a firearm, handcuffs, and similar.

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beambot
Night & weekend guards (almost universally!) do _not_ carry firearms or even
non-lethal weapons. Their job is exclusively "observe and report", and they
are not permitted to physically intervene -- as a matter of policy to limit
liability.

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jaclaz
>Night & weekend guards (almost universally!) do not carry firearms or even
non-lethal weapons. Their job is exclusively "observe and report", and they
are not permitted to physically intervene -- as a matter of policy to limit
liability.

Yep, and those are generally called not "security guards", but rather "night
watchmen" or "night guards".

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lyriendel
Congrats! I love how Cobalt's robots are super friendly-looking, and also how
they can make big, empty buildings feel safer and less scary for people who
have to work nights or weekends. I've definitely been nervous working in those
situations, and would have loved to have a Cobalt robot as a comforting
presence nearby.

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terravion
This is great news! Congrats to the Travis and the team.

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frk1206
Congrats Travis! Some say one roams the slack offices at night...

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champfencer
Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

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gcb0
cant wait to see the A round for the law firms specialized in robot
litigation.

popcorn time.

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seatonist
Gosh, does it ever look like a Dalek!

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hinkley
More like something Aperture Science would build.

