BAD ROBOT OF THE WEEK: SECURITY DROID RUNS OVER CHILD (OR DID IT?)
by Hazed
Now a robot story that turns out not to be all that it seemed.
News reports a few weeks ago told about an unfortunate child who was run over by a security robot at a shopping mall. Cue shock horror reports about the dangers of unattended robots.
The mall in Silicon Valley took all their robots off duty after the toddler’s mother complained that the robot had hit her son on the head. “He fell down on the floor, and the robot did not stop,” she said. The boy was left with a scrape on his leg and swelling to one of his feet.
Sounds like a terrible design fault if the robot wasn’t able to detect the boy!
But then people started to question the story, and having at first apologised profusely to the family, the company who made the security droids then claimed that the robot was not to blame after all. They said that the sensor data from the offending bot did not back up the family’s story. Rather than the robot running over the boy, in fact it was the boy that ran into the robot.
“The machine veered to the left to avoid the child, but the child ran backwards directly into the front quarter of the machine, at which point the machine stopped and the child fell on the ground,” the company said.
Sadly one can’t recall faulty children to have them repaired.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36793790
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/15/knightscope_mall_robot/
