Downtown Garage Robot Patrol Pilot Priced at a Third of a Guard's Cost

Unwanted activity that outlasted the usual fixes

The downtown garage had a recurring problem with unwanted activity, and the city's earlier fixes had not touched it. Officials said speed bumps and other deterrence measures had not reduced the activity.

A conventional upgrade looked costly on paper. The city's own statement put a recorded camera system at $187,000 to install. Staffing the garage with a human guard was the other obvious route, and the city's comparison put the robots at one third of that guard's cost.

The city wanted a low cost test that would show whether patrol robots were worth extending to other garages.

A two month pilot with live monitoring and clear escalation

The city began the trial on February 2, placing three robots, named Auto, TARS and Billy, in the garage for nightly shifts from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. The patrols were funded through the city's Facilities budget, which also covered the security vendor response.

The robots could engage people through questions, beeps and digital sunglasses. Behind them, trained personnel monitored the feeds live from a remote center, so a person was always watching the garage while the robots worked.

Under the supplier's arrangement, as reported, a stolen or damaged robot would be repaired or replaced at no extra cost to the city.

• Agree on patrol hours and the funding line in the city's Facilities budget.
• Start the robots on February 2 for nightly patrols from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m.
• Route less serious incidents such as loitering to contracted security.
• Route dangerous or life threatening events such as a car crash to police.
• Have city staff assess effectiveness before deciding on other garages.

What the cost numbers show so far

The trial cost the city about $11,000 over two months, which worked out to $12 an hour while the robots were on duty. The city's own comparison put the robots at one third of a human guard's cost. A recent city job posting listed starting pay of $23 an hour for unarmed guards the city employs, which gives that comparison some context.

No incident-reduction results were reported when the trial was covered. Through that stretch, the robots had not prompted any call to contracted security or to police, so the cost is the clearest number on record.

Later reporting described a shift in complaints. A police sergeant called complaints about the parkade drastically down since the pilot ended, while noting it was unclear whether traffic calming devices or residual effects of the patrols deserved the credit. The pilot ended in April, and the city cited no additional funding for robot security.

What a lease changes for a patrol program

Service Robot Co. is an OEM neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so one vendor covers the whole lifecycle. The questions this city faced, such as patrol hours, escalation and what counts as success, are the same ones we work through during a site assessment.

We offer robots on a lease only. After a site assessment, a customer receives one fixed payment on a 3 year lease, which keeps the monthly cost known before the first shift. A security patrol robot lease is a practical way to test coverage without committing to a purchase of hardware the site may outgrow.

The lesson from this pilot is about structure more than hardware. The program ended when funding did, so a budget line for the full term, a defined escalation path and a measurement plan agreed before go live are what make a robot pilot program worth extending.