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In the wake of New York City Mayor Eric Adams' surprise corruption indictment, the politician's pet tech projects may be in limbo — but one, apparently, will live on.
In an email to Futurism following news of Adams' federal indictment, Stacy D. Stephens, the executive vice president and chief client officer for the robotics company Knightscope, suggested that plans to bring back the New York Police Department's autonomous subway robot are still in motion.
Introduced in pilot mode last September to the Times Square subway station and taken out of commission early this year, Knightscope's K5 robot had apparently been collecting dust in an empty storefront for months by the time the mayor commented on its conspicuous absence during a press conference earlier this month.
"We have it in a new assignment," the mayor said in the early September press conference, per amNewYork. "Once it goes through his pilot, we’re going to respond to that, but he has a new assignment right now."
Though the mayor didn't elaborate on what "assignment" was and his spokesperson later tried to walk back the comments, Stephens told Futurismtoday that its "redeployment" is indeed forthcoming.
"As the Mayor’s office previously stated," the Knightscope spox told us, "they are working to redeploy the K5 at a [to-be-determined] location as another time-limited pilot."
As amNY notes, the six-month contract the NYPD took out with Knightscope for K5 seems to have expired earlier this year. With little public knowledge about what the plan for the $12,500 robot, last seen sitting sadly inside a Times Square subway storefront in February, it's unclear whether that contract has been renewed.
"Unfortunately," the spokesperson told us when we asked about the contract, "I am unable to share any additional information while the redeployment location is being decided."
It's also a little hazy why officials would want to keep the robot in circulation. It's unable to make arrests or effectively communicate with members of the public, and requires several police officers to guard it.
Besides reaching out to Knightscope, Futurism also contacted the city's Office of Technology and Innovation — which Adams created at the beginning of his term to spearhead projects like this one, along with other harebrained uses of taxpayer funds — by phone and email to ask if anyone there knew what was up with K5.
Given everything that's gone in and around the mayor's office over the past 24 hours, however, we can forgive them for being a bit preoccupied.
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