Incident 68: Security Robot Drowns Itself in a Fountain
Entities
View all entitiesIncident Stats
CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsHarm Distribution Basis
none
Sector of Deployment
administrative and support service activities
GMF Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsKnown AI Goal
Autonomous Drones
Potential AI Technology
Image Segmentation
Potential AI Technical Failure
Generalization Failure
CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsFull Description
A robot at an office building in Washington, DC ran itself into a water fountain. The robot, named Knightscope K5, was developed as a security robot that uses facial recognition and a variety of sensors to detect criminals. The reasons the robot fell into the fountain are unclear.
Short Description
A Knightscope K5 security robot ran itself into a water fountain in Washington, DC.
Severity
Negligible
Harm Type
Harm to physical property
AI System Description
The robot developed by the start-up contains autonomous driving and facial recognition abilities
System Developer
Knightscope
Sector of Deployment
Administrative and support service activities
Relevant AI functions
Perception, Cognition, Action
AI Techniques
Facial recognition, environmental sensing
AI Applications
autonomous driving, self-driving vehicle
Location
Washington, D.C.
Named Entities
Knightscope, Knightscope K5, Mountain View, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Stanford Shopping Center
Technology Purveyor
Knightscope
Beginning Date
2017-07-17
Ending Date
2017-07-17
Near Miss
Unclear/unknown
Intent
Accident
Lives Lost
No
Data Inputs
Photographs
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Don't read too much into this, but a security robot face-planted into an indoor fountain inside of a Washington, DC office building today. It's a coincidence, we're sure, but maybe this robot just knows what everyone else in DC does. Robots…
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A robot has drowned itself by driving into a pool.
The company markets the security robot as better than real guards in part because it never gets bored of what it does. But it appears to have looked to put an end to that work and has drive…
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From a Wall Street Journal report on Friday:
Days before Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to seize the capital and attempt to unite the divided country under his rule, Saudi Arabia promised tens of millions of …

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I’m sorry to inform you that perhaps some robots are taking this whole “be more human” thing a bit too far. I’ve seen people make jokes about jumping into a river or out of a window when they feel distressed, but one DC-based security robot…

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In this day and age of climate change-denying presidents, lack of healthcare, and anti-vaxxers, it’s easy to get downtrodden about the world. For one robot, things got a bit too much, and it appears to have thrown itself into a fountain in …

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The rise of the robots has been (slightly) dampened.
An autonomous 300-pound crime-fighting android tasked with patrolling an office building in Washington, D.C., met an untimely end on Monday — after it tumbled into a water fountain.
Twitt…
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On July 17, a Knightscope K5 robot appears to have lost all patience for its job as a security guard and flung itself into a water fountain. It’s not exactly clear where in Washington DC the incident took place, with mentions of both GMMB a…
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The automation revolution, where most of our jobs are replaced by robots and we spend the rest of our days floating around on rubber rings sipping piña coladas, has hit a snag: a Knightscope K5 security bot appears to have fallen down som…

- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
I'm sorry to inform you that perhaps some robots are taking this whole "be more human" thing a bit too far. I've seen people make jokes about jumping into a river or out of a window when they feel distressed, but one DC-based security robot…

- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
The Knightscope K5 security robot’s job is to be on the look out for crime.
It might also want to keep an eye on where it ’s going.
Officer workers at the Georgetown Harbour office and retail space in Washington D.C. tweeted photos on Monday…

- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Apparently, even robots have bad days. For one robot, the bad day was just too much that it has thrown itself into a fountain. The security robot at a D.C. mall appears to have made the potentially suicidal decision all by itself. The fed u…
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- View the report at the Internet Archive
A security guard robot has met a watery end in a shopping centre water fountain, prompting a social media storm of doomsday predictions about suicidal robots and Marvin-related humour.
The Knightscope security robot was patrolling the Georg…

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When Robot Face-Plants In Fountain, Onlookers Show Humanity — By Gloating
The rise of artificial intelligence poses its fair share of dangers. Last year, for instance, physicist Stephen Hawking said its development could be "either the best…
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A security robot called Steve did not commit suicide by falling into a fountain in Washington DC, but due to a tragic accident.
After retrieving data from Steve the roboguard’s black box discovered that the accident was caused not by suicid…

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Alas, it seems we've got a few more years before the robots take over.
A security robot created by the company Knightscope was patrolling an office complex in Washington D.C. when it rolled into a fountain and met its untimely demise on Mon…
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Twitter tributes have flooded in for a state of the art security robot that plunged wheel-over-nosecone into a shallow fountain near Washington D.C. — and couldn’t get back up.
The roving robot — a four-foot tall oblong affair developed by …

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Managing work-related stress is tough. We've all been there, trying our best to cope with pressure at our work places. Now the bots are learning how difficult it is to be a human. A security robot patrolling at the Washington Harbour office…
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Machine built to keep humans in check defeated by stairs and fountain in incident where ‘no one was harmed’
The machine uprising has been dealt a serious blow after a robot cop was found face down in a fountain.
Built to autonomously patrol…

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But this particular robot, for reasons as yet not known, 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 bee…

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If you’re worried about the inevitable rise of the robots and the destruction of the human race—don’t be.
One of the robots produced by Knightscope—which produces egg- and car-shaped security robots and wants everyone with spare cash to inv…
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A security robot tasked with patrolling an office building in Washington DC has instead driven itself into a water feature.
The bot appears to have been a Knightscope K5, a surveillance bot designed to roll around “parking lots, corporate c…

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(CNN) It was one small step for security technology, but one giant leap in the wrong direction for robotkind.
A security robot in Washington -- lovingly named Steve -- plunged down four steps into a fountain Monday.
Our D.C. office building…

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CLOSE A security robot drowned in a Georgetown fountain. Time
Guillermo Meneses remembers the good times with Steve, the security robot who tragically died Monday. (Photo: @Gil_Meneses on Twitter)
He was only with us a few days. But, the lo…

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A Knightscope robot in better days. Knightscope
Robots can do all kinds of things that humans just can’t.
They can sit in the same place for years and weld car parts together with a level of precision that no human can faithfully reproduce.…

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The watery demise of a security robot in Washington, DC was seized on by social media commentators as a stark metaphor for our times.
The K5 autonomous robot was patrolling outside the Washington Harbour office and retail complex on Tuesday…
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The robot that patrols the Prudential Center in Boston. The same type of robot recently fell into a fountain in Washington, D.C.
Looks like the type of robot patrolling the Pru isn’t as indestructible as one might think.
The same type of eg…
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Steve the Robot seemed to be living an idyllic life. Designed and built by the Silicon Valley startup Knightscope Inc. in 2014, the five-foot-tall android had just begun his new job as a security guard in the halls of MRP Realty’s headquart…
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This is probably not the security droid we're looking for.
The egg-shaped robot, known as the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, drew sympathy and jeers on Monday after it stumbled down a set of steps and into a fountain at Washington Harbour, an …

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The robot apocalypse is clearly a ways off if news out of Washington, D.C., this week is anything to go by. A security robot working at the Washington Harbour complex in Georgetown met a nasty end when it toppled into a water feature …

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Boston Dynamics makes some mighty impressive robots. One of them is Atlas, a 6'3" humanoid that made its public debut in 2013 and competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
But during a test exercise last year, video of which Boston Dynamics…
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