Coming Soon, a Night Watchman With Wheels?

The night watchman of the future is 5 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds and looks a lot like R2-D2 – without the whimsy. And will work for $6.25 an hour.

The robot, which can be seen in a promotional video, is still very much a work in progress. The system will have a video camera, thermal imaging sensors, a laser range finder, radar, air quality sensors and a microphone. It will also have a limited amount of autonomy, such as the ability to follow a preplanned route. It will not, at least for now, include advanced features like facial recognition, which is still being perfected.

  Knight-scope-settled in Silicon Valley because it was hoping for a warm reception from technology companies that employ large security forces to protect their sprawling campuses.

Over all, there are about 1.3 million private security guards in the United States, and they are low paid for the most part, averaging about $23,000 a year, according to the Service Employees International Union. Most are not unionized, so they are vulnerable to low-cost automation alternatives.

K5 also raises questions about mass surveillance, which has already set off intense debate in the United States and Europe with the expansion of closed-circuit television systems on city streets and elsewhere. The Knight-scope founders, however, have a radically different notion, which involves crime prediction, or “precog” — a theme of the movie “Minority Report.”