The original note, as written at the time
CAR SENTRY. An agile robot mounted into the roof of a car that emerges to threaten thieves in case the alarm is set off or if burglar detection is triggered.
Ongoing development
An agile robot mounted into the roof of a car that emerges to threaten thieves when the alarm is set off or burglar detection is triggered.
The honest reading is that this is a deterrent shaped like a weapon, and the design question is whether it can deter without becoming one.
A current car alarm is a noise. Everyone in the street ignores it, including the owner, and the thief knows that within about thirty seconds. What the sentry adds is presence: something that comes out, sees, and is clearly able to do something. Presence is a much stronger deterrent than sound, and it is also a much shorter step to harm.
So the constraint has to be built in rather than promised. The sentry should be incapable of injury — no projectile, no blade, no great mass — and its action should be to record, illuminate and speak. A machine that can say I have photographed you and I am calling the owner is more effective, and much more defensible, than one that lunges.
The agility is worth having for a different reason: a robot that can move to the side of the car where the activity is, and get a clear view, is a witness. That is the product. Footage with a face in it recovers more property than any siren.
And the roof mount is right because a car’s only defensible high ground is its roof, and a device that can look down sees over walls and into hands.
Deterrence by being seen, not by being feared.