Ascento Autonomous Security Robots — ETH Zurich Spinoff European Deployment

Ascento, a Swiss robotics startup specializing in autonomous security robots, has deployed its AI-powered surveillance robots across commercial and industrial facilities in Switzerland and neighboring countries. The company's robots combine wheeled mobility with advanced computer vision and natural language processing capabilities to perform continuous perimeter security patrols, anomaly detection, and incident reporting without human intervention. The Ascento robot platform uses a modular sensor stack that includes 360-degree cameras, thermal imaging, LIDAR for navigation, and microphone arrays for acoustic anomaly detection. The AI perception system processes this sensor data in real-time using edge-compute hardware onboard the robot, enabling immediate response to detected anomalies without the latency of cloud-based processing. When the robot detects an unauthorized person in a restricted area, a potential intrusion, or unusual acoustic signatures, it can simultaneously raise an alarm, stream video to the security operations center, and navigate to an optimal vantage point for documentation. Navigation in outdoor and semi-structured environments represents a core technical challenge that Ascento has addressed through custom-built mobility systems using GPS, visual inertial odometry, and learned environment models. The robots are designed to operate 24/7 in all weather conditions with IP66-rated enclosures and autonomous docking for battery charging. Deployment results show a 40% reduction in security incidents requiring human response, alongside a 60% reduction in false alarm rates.