This robot took a long walk off a short fountain

19th July 2017

Knightscope

Alice Matthews

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A robot security guard tasked with patrolling car parks and buildings in Washington DC appears to have taken its life into its own hands by rolling into a fountain and drowning itself. In a tweet that quickly went viral, Bilal Farooqui said: “Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself. We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots.”

Measuring 5ft and weighing in at 136kg, the Knightscope K5, is an autonomous, rocket-ship shaped droid that is fitted with GPS, lasers, sensors and cameras that are meant to help it monitor its surroundings.

First developed and tested in Silicon Valley in 2013, the K5 detects abnormal noises such as gunshots in addition to being able to detect odd temperature changes before notifying local (human) law authorities.

Moving at around 3mph, the K5 is supposed to identify known criminals and avoid law-abiding citizens. For this particular robot, however, the task proved too great. It appears to have driven down the steps of the fountain in the middle of the office and ended up floating sideways, rendering it immobile. It was removed, although is likely to have been permanently damaged.

The company behind the robot, Knightscope, has said the episode was ‘an isolated event’ and promised to deliver a new robot for free.

This is not the first time that one of Knightscope’s patrolling robots has found its way into trouble. Last year, a 16-month-old toddler was run over by one of the autonomous devices in a Silicon Valley shopping centre, leaving them bruised, but carried on as if nothing had happened.