The Marion Star have a feature on the two robots that work on K.I.T.T. in the SSC. Named Katie and Lisa by NBC, they are two reconditioned industrial Fanuc ArcMate 100i RJ2 robots and were provided by the company RobotWorx, who are now enjoying the exposure.
“I was very impressed that they figured so prominently in the storyline,” said Michael Hall, RobotWorx customer service manager. “Hopefully, they’ll be a regular feature, and they’ll be in at least one or two scenes per episode. The folks at Universal are going to be the ones that make the final call on that.” He adds that the show’s producers plan to increase the amount of humanlike interaction the machines have with their human co-stars, in the style of Mike’s high-five with with one of them.
Keith Wanner, owner of RobotWorx, said, “Anything like [Knight Rider] just gives more credibility to what we do as a company. When somebody sees us and they know we’ve done something like Modern Marvels or Knight Rider, it just helps our business.”
In the first episode, A Knight In Shining Armor, Katie and Lisa generated scanning beams across K.I.T.T.’s surface as they inspected him for damage. Hall reveals that this is television magic. “The scanning is not too far from the truth [but] a lot of what you’re going to see in any type of television show or feature film is going to kind of delve into the realm of science fiction. There are robots in the automotive industry that do scan auto parts. Some of it is not really as far removed from reality as we think.”