Robot cop found face down in office-block fountain

Wanna feel old? This is what Robocop looks like now, kind of … Knightscope’s K5 autonomous patrol robot. Photograph: Knightscope, Inc. 2015/Publicity image

The machine uprising has been dealt a serious blow after a robot cop was found face down in a fountain.

Built to autonomously patrol offices and shopping malls, the Knightscope K5 security robot is meant to be able to navigate environments and keep unruly humans in check. Instead, after being deployed to a Washington DC office block, it was found drowned in a watery grave. Much like a Dalek, it appears to have been defeated by stairs.

Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself.

We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots. pic.twitter.com/rGLTAWZMjn

— Bilal Farooqui (@bilalfarooqui) July 17, 2017

The bizarro egg-shaped robot’s premature demise is not thought to be suspicious. It is believed the robot fell down the steps of its own fecklessness.

Stacy Dean Stephens, vice president of marketing and sales at Knightscope, told Cnet that it was an “isolated incident” for the K5 unit and that “no people were harmed or involved in any way”, although apparently humans in wellies were required to fish out the defunct robot.

Steps are our best defense against the Robopocalypse

(Security robot down at Georgetown harbor) pic.twitter.com/eVf7YUJX1j

— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) July 17, 2017

Since taking the streets in limited numbers, the K5 patrol bot, which is apparently packed with sensors to be the smart eyes and ears for its human law enforcement colleagues, has had its fair share of incidents. In April, a K5 patrolling the mean streets of Google-home-town Mountain View, California was allegedly involved in a carpark altercation with a 41-year-old man, while in July 2016 another K5 unit was accused of running over a 16-month-old child in a Stanford shopping centre.

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