Kisi, a Brooklyn, NY-based company specializing in keyless access control systems, recently launched Kisi Labs, with its first product experiment “Drone Guard” designed to be the doorman of the future.
“Today you can call a car with your phone, transfer money with one click, and even schedule a dog walk through an app, but you still have to wait in line to get a visitor’s badge,” notes Kisi co-founder Bernhard Mehl. This was what sparked the concept behind the Drone Guard at Kisi Labs, a subsidiary of Kisi Inc. in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
Drone Guard is an on-demand drone doorman service — an off-the-shelf drone equipped with a smartphone carrying the Kisi app, which uses Bluetooth, GPS, and WiFi to unlock and manage door access. First, guests are invited to the office via a calendar invite. Kisi then registers the guest e-mail into the access system and schedules a visit to the office (guests must submit a voice sample and selfie to register). When the visitor rings, the drone arrives from its designated charging/waiting zone to authenticate visitor using facial and voice recognition before unlocking the door and escorting the visitor to their destination.
Through the installation process, the drone learns the entire flight map by self-exploring the building and hallways using floorplan analysis software. By outfitting the building complex with wireless access control, the Drone Guard can fly in hallways, staircases, and even call and control elevators.
Tech-savvy tenants are taking over more and more building space in New York; with this, facility managers are seeing freelancers, new hires, and delivery services coming into the office needing different levels of access. Kisi uses cloud-based technology to streamline this process. Whether in owner- or lessee-occupied facilities, Kisi makes it easy to control door access to spaces with high volume traffic such as gyms, coworking facilities, and building complexes. The system can be operated by the facility manager from anywhere in the world, providing insights to visitor logs, drone status, and access trends in the building.
“Kisi is devoted to finding the most efficient way to get you in the building securely. At Kisi Labs, we use the motto ‘secure the future’ as our guiding principle to help ambitious leaders explore how to make security an interactive experience between humans and the space around them,” says Mehl. “Access control is just the start; navigation, in-office deliveries, and mobile surveillance are how we envision drones utilized in buildings in the future.”
To use Drone Guard in a building, the facility first needs to have a Kisi Access Control System, which costs about $1,000 for hardware and then $250 per month, depending on how many doors are connected. Once installed, the Drone Guard costs $7,499 for the drone, Kisi equipped phone, and floorplan analysis software. The product is available for purchase by contacting the Kisi Labs team.
