The other day, I came across some interesting news. It said that an AI-equipped robot is assisting police work in China. This robot is spherical, its entire body covered in tire rubber, and can smoothly change direction in any direction, east-west, north-south.
It rolls at a maximum speed of 35 km/h to track criminals, and in some cases fires a net launcher to capture them. Questions arise, such as "What about stairs?" and "What to do if it fires by mistake?", but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was reminded of the movie "Robocop". Or perhaps the autonomous AI tank Tachikoma from "Ghost in the Shell".
In Japan, it seems that legislation is necessary to use robots at the forefront of criminal investigations like in science fiction movies. However, for security work performed by private companies, it seems possible to mechanize it immediately by repurposing Chinese police robots.
When we think of the security industry in Japan, we tend to have a stereotypical image of elderly people standing at the gate all day or staring at analog monitors in the security room, but just how far has the mechanization of the security industry progressed?
So, the first person we spoke to was Kiichiro Iio, a director of AIK Co., Ltd. The company was established in 2017 by Eltes Co., Ltd., which provides risk countermeasure support for social media flame wars, with the aim of "entering a field that has a lot of room for digital use."
AIK Co., Ltd. is currently working on digital transformation in the security industry. "We understood even before we started our business that many of the management and employees of security companies are elderly and not used to using digital technology. When we actually started working on it, we found that they tended to dislike changes from the way they were used to doing things, and that they were not good at using IT and systems," said Iio.
However, there is such a shortage of workers in the security industry that there is no time for likes and dislikes. That is why AIK is developing a platform called "AIK order." The platform specializes in connecting clients who want to request security services with security companies.
