Knightscope was founded in 2013, its founders stated that they were motivated to create autonomous security robots following the Sandy Hook School Shooting in 2012.

[7] Knightscope says they hope the ADRs will help security and law enforcement personnel detect trouble while preventing and minimizing public injuries and fatalities.

As of 2017, companies that have been confirmed as clients of Knightscope include Microsoft, Uber, Juniper Networks, the Sacramento Kings, LaGuardia Airport and NBC Universal.

[5][10][6] In March 2021, Knightscope won second place in the "Power of Passengers Challenge" security contest hosted by NASA and the TSA, winning a $20,000 grant.

[9][18] Knightscope is notable among public companies due to the fact that a significant portion of its seed funding came from equity crowdfunding, rather than venture capital.

[19] In October 2022, Knightscope acquired CASE Emergency systems, a maker of blue light security communicators commonly used in parks and college campuses.

[21] Besides being autonomous, robot features include the ability to read license plates, run thermal scans, detect hidden weapons, and identify the faces of wanted people.

[31] Knightscope autonomous machines are designed to supplement human security teams by alerting them to suspicious activity, rather than directly intervening.

[36] The apartment manager, however, stated the robot did directly deter crime, on top of assisting with solving vandalism reports.

[36] An animal shelter that rented a Knightscope robot for a month reported lower rates of vandalism and fewer car break-ins during its deployment.

[36] Vanderbilt University law professor Christopher Slobogin described Knightscope robots as "panvasive" because they are more noticeable than traditional security cameras and can thus be perceived as more intrusive.

Jeramie Scott, a national security fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said, “Automated surveillance, facial recognition and license plate recognition in public makes us all suspects.”[40] The center's President, Marc Rotenberg stated that “Once you enter public space and collect images and sound recordings, you have entered another realm.

This is the kind of pervasive surveillance that has put people on edge.”[41] Rotenberg stated that these are very similar privacy concerns as those with CCTV and Google mapping cars.

In April 2017, a 41-year-old Mountain View man was arrested in connection with an alleged parking-lot altercation with a K5, also at the Stanford Shopping Center.

[47][48] In December 2017, the San Francisco SPCA rented a Knightscope K5 robot to patrol the area next to their animal shelter, including the public sidewalk where homeless people were encamped.