A security robot failed in NYC. Now, it's trying to protect downtown Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For 20 hours a day, seven days a week, a security robot rolls around the old Kansas City Star building on the 1600 block of McGee Street, like the 21st century version of a street patrolling beat cop.

No, the robot is not an employee of the Kansas City Police Department. But, in some ways, the white, bullet-shaped, sub-5-foot, 420-pound robot is like a neighborhood beat cop as it glides its way through the Crossroads district on four wheels, gathering data from its cameras and greeting passersby.

The robot, named Lance, is the newest security officer for Patmos Tech, the software and data hosting company that has transformed The Star’s old building into a data center in the heart of the city. Lance has been around for nearly a month for Patmos, which has only been in the building since December, to aid its human security team.

Bringing in assistance was needed, Chief Operating Officer Joe Morgan said, because the company quickly ran into security issues around their newly acquired home.

Shattered glass on the ground after cars were broken into. Intruders attempted to enter the building at night.

Blue tarp is currently on several of the windows on the all-glass building because people shoot at them from the highway, Morgan said.

Titan Protection Security was hired, but that didn’t bring the company much comfort since employees work in the building all hours of the day. Enter Lance, short for Lancelot, who helps guard the Patmos castle; the classic fortified structure is the company’s emblem.

“Even with 24/7 security, it’s like, do you really at two in the morning want to send one individual by themselves to, you know, go inspect something? It’s a big building, right, it’s essentially a full city block,” Morgan said.

“So Lance is actually a tool for the security people as much as anything else, and it’s also just a visual deterrent. So we want the neighborhood to look like it’s active, and we want people to think that this area has got activity.”

Meet Lance, the Autonomous Security Robot

Lance is a K5 Autonomous Security Robot (ASR) from California-based company Knightscope.

In April, Patmos hosted an event with the Economic Club of Kansas City. Voicing the company’s issue with security, an attendee recommended the robot as a potential solution.

Equipped with a 360-degree camera, it can be controlled by phone and patrols on its own, thanks to highly popular artificial intelligence or AI, with the user setting its path. Lance also records data as it roams, intaking its surroundings and learning what people and vehicles are normally in the area.

Lance has already assisted police investigations, Morgan said, by supplying footage of an attempted burglary on Aug. 29.

“A few times, people have tried to break in. Lance has been able to capture their license plate, and we’ve been able to track it to individuals that have done this at other places and it becomes more information for the police officers to use,” Morgan said.

Kansas City police could not confirm if they’ve used footage from the robot, but a local crime map shows a property damage incident occurred at 5 a.m. on Aug. 29.

“I do think it’s fair to say that detectives regularly canvass scenes for surveillance footage,” police spokesperson Sgt. Phil DiMartino said. “This includes businesses or Ring doorbell footage. If this robot provides another avenue for video evidence, then detectives would seek it out in the same way they do footage from businesses.”

Knightscope was founded in 2013 and has been shipping its robots to companies since 2015, gaining widespread attention and use in the last decade.

The K5 ASR was famously, or infamously, used by the New York Police Department to patrol its subway system from Sept. 2023 to Feb. 2024. The robot had to be guarded at all times by officers.

In Kansas City, a K5 robot named Marshall helped lower crime rates at Brywood Centre, a shopping mall in the Southeast portion of the city, according to multiple television reports last summer.

While the company does not comment on specific clients, Knightscope CEO William Santana Li said the robots were built to secure secluded areas where law enforcement could not always be.

“You need to put the robots there in the most boring places and then redeploy those humans to where they’re actually needed,” Li said. “Sometimes people don’t listen, but that’s our kind of consistent advice to people.”

‘Most popular employee’

Currently, Patmos is utilizing the robot to secure its data center, which has already wracked up to half a billion dollars in investment to date. Cabinets of hard drives holding thousands of terabytes of digital storage, worth millions of dollars, occupy only about 15% of the building.

The mixed-use building currently has one other tenant, Nebius, an AI company based in Amsterdam, and plans to host other tenants. There is also a plan for the future renovation of The Star’s old printing press area into a convention center, Morgan said.

Patmos anticipates spending more than $1 billion on the building.

With so much investment into the building, it makes the need for security is that much higher, which is why Patmos has been pleased with Lance’s performance so far. And a robot security guard for a tech company falls right in line with the image they are looking to portray.

“I think there’s like five different TikToks out there now about Lance. He’s definitely the most popular employee, I think, at Patmos right now,” Morgan said. “And he brings a smile to people’s faces... We’re a tech company, and that’s kind of our focus. And so I think it helps express that.”

Looks like Lance will be a full-time Patmos employee for the forseeable future.

“I think Lance will be around a long time,” Morgan said. “I think just the benefit we’ve seen already for the existing security staff has kind of sold me on it.”