A startup company in Singapore called OTSAW Digital has released its four-wheeled security robot, named O-R3, which includes a drone that can be launched after intruders.

Because of its “drone-in-robot design,” the O-R3's range can extend significantly in comparison to the typical ground-based autonomous robot, giving the O-R3 capabilities that ordinary security robots wouldn’t have.

“[If] you have obstacles on the ground, we can launch a drone that has an aerial view of where the intruder is hiding, maybe on the other side of the wall, on the fence, or the gate, stuff like that,” says Ling Ting Ming, CEO of OTSAW Digital and its parent company ActiV Technology, through an article with Mashable.

Thanks to being powered by data, the O-R3 has a number of unique features. It can differentiate people and determine if they are an employee, regular visitor or intruder. It can also recognize suspicious objects such as unattended bags, and it can activate security by sending an alarm to a forward command center.

“The more data we feed the robot, the more it learns,” says Ling. “For a start, we will look at quite basic stuff ... if a bag is unattended for five minutes it triggers an alarm. We can classify who is an employee, who is an intruder.”

Ling continues, “there will be false positives [but] as the machine learns, it gets sharper.”

From May 23-25, the company will unveil an outdoor version of the robot during CommunicAsia2017. The outdoor version of the robot is the size of a golf buggy, and has a range of three miles.

The company is currently developing an indoor version of the robot, which will be smaller, and won’t include 3D LIDAR sensors or the UAS.

While some may think these robots will eventually replace humans, Ling does not see that happening. Instead, he believes that the robots will free humans up to handle more difficult tasks.

“I definitely feel like humans cannot be replaced,” Ling says. “The robots are just here to complement the humans, but humans should do something more ... of [higher] skills.”