You are a middle manager at a mega-corp running a mall, arcade or similar public facility.
You've heard from higher up that the company is tightening its belt, so decide some cost-cutting measures need to go into place.
But where? Checkout staff are all but history, drones collect customer shopping trolleys, where else can you cut corners for a quick buck?

How about the security staff?

Replacing them with drones is asking for trouble, and in any case most mall cops don't need an LMG built into their arms outside of the Redmond branch. Mainly they're there to be visible and deter potential shoplifters merely by being present.

How about running with a skeleton crew of real security and filling the void with ARO/holographic security officers? The holo-emitters are already in place projecting signs and adverts, why not just throw a couple of agents with some empathy software into the mix and have them walk the patrols?

(Yes, there are obviously some major flaws, but this is the sort of cost cutting a middle manager in fear for his job might try!)

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I guess a bit will depend on what sort of items you are selling.

For more basic goods, you won't even need to have the actual items on the shelf, it could be purely ARO. The customer just selects the item and quantity as they shop and the order is assembled in the warehouse in back and shot out on a conveyor to meet you at the checkout. Thus you could very slash security quite a bit as they would only really need a token force at the checkout/access/exit as there is no goods to be lifted on the shelves themselves.

For the more upscale you could use the projected personas, not just as security but as staff, catering to the clients and answering questions/making suggestions while also monitoring the clients.

It's always been my understanding that AROs are projected by interface contacts, glasses, goggles, or cybereyes; there's no hologram, in the classic sci-fi sense. If you have one of the above, you can see them; if you don't, they're invisible, because they're not really there. How do you deal with thieves who don't wear AR-capable hardware?

Use Holograms...
Of course, they will ignore them, but...

There are holographic projectors. And all commlinks have a holographic projector too. It makes sense to use holograms in a mall to force people to see ads regardless of their AR filters.

With enhanced information added via ARO.

And be a prime target for teenaged hackers to reprogram to display quite hard pornography from instead of the intended advertisements.......

And now Zoé, my blue space elf teenaged hacker, has a new prank to play.

Ever play the Dead Money DLC for Fallout New Vegas? They use just this sort of thing for security, and it works really well. Holograms of guards projected from a micro-drone with set patrol routes.

Although this being Shadowrun, drones are probably cheaper. Less personable though.

why not combine the two? it's probably a negligible cost increase to have a small drone project a hologram and run a virtual personality program at the same time as it moves around. given decent armour, it's basically immune to anything less than gunfire, and since it's in a shopping mall you typically won't have to deal with gunfire anyways. mount a less lethal weapon on the drone (taser, DMSO spray gun, pain inducer, etc) and call it a day.

One of my characters uses small drones with holographic projectors, thermal smoke generators and loudspeakers to project mirror images of himself and confuse opponents. Or to pretend he summons spirits.

The Ferret would be a wonderful choice for this. Enough mod slots to take all the armor and weapon mounts for tasers or whatnot you want and it's ubiquitous and cheap to boot.

Holograms are pretty easy to spot as not the real deal. That is, if the "commoner" customers might be fooled, anyone proficient in perception is rocking that Perception+Intuition(2). So holograms can supplement actual security measures, but can't replace them fully.
Unless you're in the barrens hiring SINless nobodies, though, drones can be a safer cheaper choice, and they don't need to be LMG-equipped. Some Ferrets with tasers can be just as effective as metahuman personnel, leaving only detainment, searches, and handling over to the law enforcement to the meahumans.

Holograms in SR are purely interface devices. They cannot affect the physical world on their own, and everyone knows it. So using them as a threat won't work.

A hologram based customer service interface, like a virtual receptionist, with visible drone based security as the threat? Yeah, that's actually probably pretty common.




-k