Slashdot Mirror
Parents Upset After Their Boy Was 'Knocked Down and Run Over' By A Security Robot (abc7news.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via KGO-TV: PSA: Beware of dangerous security robots at the Stanford Shopping Center! After a young boy was "knocked down and run over" by one of the Stanford Shopping Center security robots, the boy's parents want to help prevent others from getting hurt. KGO-TV reports: "They said the machine is dangerous and fear another child will get hurt. Stanford Shopping Center's security robot stands 5' tall and weighs 300 pounds. It amuses shoppers of all ages, but last Thursday, 16-month-old Harwin Cheng had a frightening collision with the robot. 'The robot hit my son's head and he fell down facing down on the floor and the robot did not stop and it kept moving forward,' Harwin's mom Tiffany Teng said. Harwin's parents say the robot ran over his right foot, causing it to swell, but luckily the child didn't suffer any broken bones. Harwin also got a scrape on his leg from the incident." Teng said, "He was crying like crazy and he never cries. He seldom cries." They are concerned as to why the robot didn't detect Harwin. "Garage doors nowadays, we're just in a day in age where everything has some sort of a sensor," shopper Ashle Gerrard said. "Maybe they have to work out the sensors more. Maybe it stopped detecting or it could be buggy or something," shopper Ankur Sharma said. The parents said a security guard told them another child was hurt from the same robot just days before. They're hoping their story will help other parents be more careful the next time they're at the Stanford Shopping Center. The robots are designed by Knightscope and come equipped with self-navigation, infra-red cameras and microphones that can detect breaking glass to support security services.
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
Why does a glass breaking sensor need to move? Why does it need to be 300 lbs.
Such sensors are standard on home alarm systems and are small and cheap. Also they have pretty good range.
Sounds like somebody just wanted to make a cheap thing into a very high markup item because "robot!"
Maybe it was running on the Tesla autopilot algorithm!
I kid, I kid...
It detected that he was Asian, so it didn't shoot.
Eventually children will evolve a mechanism to prevent them being run over by wayward security robots, and the strong will survive.
Why do I get the feeling a lawsuit isn't far behind this announcement? The parent's description of the child's horror and emotional turmoil seem ready made for a lawyer to grab up and sue Knightscope, the mall, and every business (with money) in earshot and eyesight of the event.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In a world of autonomous machines, people and animals are squishy bugs. If this sounds extreme, consider how it is actually the case in the world of automobiles, and how previous to that the risk was horse carriages. We can make devices good at not running over people, but never perfect.
Bruce Perens.
It seems the robot has a lidar sensor on the top and maybe another lidar or simple IR distance sensor midlevel about a 2.3ft above the ground. A little kid could walk beside it without the robot seeing the kid and the wide base could then easily run over something. Seems like it needs some low level bump sensors or maybe not run it in a crowded area.
But apparently it can't detect breaking bones.
#DeleteChrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The phrase "knocked down and run over" should not be in quotes since it is simply describing what happened.
Quotes are used to either
- distance the author from a statement--meaning that the author does not agree with or holds suspicion over the validity of the statement
- actually quote what a person said (which in some cases overlaps with the reasoning of the first item)
In this article neither is the case.
If you can't trust this thing to detect that it's attempting to run over something like a child, can you trust it to accurately detect and report that a crime is in progress?
To be fair, the child was given 20 seconds to comply.
"He was crying like crazy and he never cries."
Really? A 16 month old child that never cries? I don't believe that.
Maybe the robot is related Bender Bending Rodríguez.
More police are shot by whites than by blacks in the United States.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Small children can sometimes fall out of an adult's peripheral vision, if they are concentrating on what is further ahead of them rather than on what happens to be on or near ground-level of otherwise familiar territory. This has actually happened to me, and I stopped immediately, as I realized I had not seen whatever it was that I would have otherwise walked right on top of. Fortunately for me, the child was not seriously hurt, but was largely startled by what had happened, and the parents were thankfully not vindictive. Of course, this robot also stayed on its course, which may have led to injuries being more serious than if it had stopped immediately upon contact, as I did.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
young boy was "knocked down and run over" by one of the Stanford Shopping Center security robots
let that be a lesson to the rest of you, the Stanford Shopping Center is bot territory! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Since when does a robot get to make its' own rules. Either way it is a motor operated vehicle in a pedestrian environment and that means that even if the kid was running circles around it the fault lies with the vehicle or the operator. What would be interesting and precedent setting is who would be found at fault ? The programmer, and/or designer, or the people who let it loose in an environment it was pretty clearly not ready for. If you started running floor polisher in a crowded mall and ran over a child I don't think there would be any doubt about fault. That said people do need to keep a closer eye on their kids.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
http://www.businesswire.com/ne...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Does he NEVER cry, or does he SELDOM cry? Which is it?! In the words of the illustrious D. TRUMP, "something's definitely going on here."
It was established in TFS that folks love the robot and the assumption is something like that is safe. The parent could be walking 10 feet away letting the boy check out the neato robot and he would have been run down before anyone but Bruce Lee could do anything.
Why is everybody's kneejerk reaction to blame the parent?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How do you know he was unattended? He could have been standing right next to the parents.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
We have no evidence here that the bot is more likely to step on somebody's foot than say Paul Blart.
Table-ized A.I.
than a typical obese American?
Stanford Shopping Center's security robot stands 5' tall and weighs 300 pounds. . . . 'The robot hit my son's head and he fell down facing down on the floor and the robot did not stop and it kept moving forward,'"
One takes their own life in their hands any time they go out in public nowadays, especially when they go stores. Get that much mass moving and momentum takes hold.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Please stand aside. You have twenty seconds to comply.
The subject did not comply. After several warnings with increasing level of severity:
Four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force!
And there you go.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
A security guard told them another child was hurt from the same robot just days before.
The nice point here is that we can rely on this helpful witness, which job's is threatened by the robot: he will not cover the mess.
IIRC there is little bone to break in a 16 month old child: most of the skeleton is still cartilage, which can bent a lot without breaking.
"Vending machines kill people?"
Yes, in fact you're more likely to die from a vending machine accident than you are a shark attack.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
One of Knightscope's corporate rivals in robotic security development, Omni Consumer Products, announced that it has had tremendous success with it's own product designed to assist in inner city law enforcement. In additional news, Omni Consumer Products thanked board member Mr. Kinney on his lifelong dedication to the company, and wished him a happy retirement.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Hell, a frickin' Roomba can tell when it bumps into something.
You can buy our robots in any color you like, so long as it's white.
Eat your heart out, Henry Ford!
No, idiots tip them on top of themselves trying to nudge the candy bar out.
We going to sue
Stanford Shopping Center
Knightscope
who ever made the Sensors
and any independent contractors
This thread is useless without any video, infrared or not...
Both your post and that of the GP are worthless without adjusting the (missing) numbers so that the results are per capita.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
We don't know the exact situation. In close conditions, the child could have been as little as one staggering jump away from veering into the robot's path. Do you expect the parents to have 50 ms reaction times 24/7 ?
The robot needs to be re-engineered. The design team screwed up pretty badly.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I posted this story FOUR HOURS before you did, and by the way why is mine marked in red as 'SPAM'??!?
Come correct, Slashdot.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Now that it's tasted human blood, it will have to be put down. It's the only way to be sure.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Should that not matter if they're both talking about the same place with same number of people?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I wonder if it can tell the difference between breaking glass and someone playing a recording of breaking glass. Does griefing a robot count as a crime?
... Or one jump into traffic, or off into a subway track. If you can't control your kid in a mall, perhaps they shouldn't have been parents. Then to blame the robot for their inattentiveness.
Why can just anyone have kids? No regulation whatsoever, no background checks, no permits or license, just on a whim anyone can have the immense power and awesome responsibility to raise children.
The robot needs to be re-engineered. The design team screwed up pretty badly.
This is assuming that the story is accurate, and that the kid didn't just twist his ankle while running circles around the robot, and then bump into it when he fell. Absent any video, I'm going to have to take a pass on declaring judgement here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pretty insensitive posts modded up here.
A child was crushed and iirc killed by a revolving door on roppongi hills in tokyo when it opened some years ago because sensors were not low enough to detect the child. It should be required reading.
Or cost cutting.
For a design like that it should really have a ring of ultrasonic, infrared, camera, or similiar sensors affixed pointing around the radius of the robots tread path and set up to stop the robot if anything is projected to go under it.
It needs some of that.
Also, 16 months old is TOO YOUNG to even understand the robot is different than a garbage can. The parents are outright irresponsible in their actions.
If there is going to be a robot that interacts with children, it should be one specialized for that. Leave the security robot to do it's job. Entertain your dumb kid with something designed for kids. Hey! I know! Next take the kid to the free range pit bull farm!
No, I expect 200ms reaction times 24/7, which would have been sufficient for your scenario.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
That was my point, Chris.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But under what circumstances?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Granted, the robot should have been designed to take little kid craziness into account, but I'm betting the direct cause of the incident was said craziness.
Have you never had an insufficiently attended child run into you?
Once again, another example of parents who can't keep their kid under control and well-behaved.
That said, maybe the company should have made the robot scarier looking.
The robots are designed by Knightscope and come equipped with self-navigation, infra-red cameras and microphones
In the future, parents should check for a pulse to make sure their children are not undead before taking them to any mall with robots. Safety first.
No, it's a one off accident, improve it if you want and move on.
People bump into things all the time, and with cars too. It's an ACCIDENT.
I'm going to take a guess that you aren't a parent.
Toddlers aren't under 100% positive control at all times. Deal with it. The parents undoubtedly had considered all sorts of possibilities for harm, but could have overlooked the possibility that the mall might run some 300-pound juggernauts around under their own power unsupervised and without proper safety measures.
Have you ever walked around holding a young child's hand? I have fond memories, but one memory is that we, as a team, were not able to walk or maneuver very fast. If surprised by a security robot, I'm not sure I could have gotten my son out of its way in time.
The mall screwed up bad here. Under no circumstances should the robot have run anyone over. It was dangerous, unsupervised by mall personnel, and out of most people's experience.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We had special rules for streets and parking lots (I used to announce "parking lot rules", because those places are specifically dangerous. So are subway platforms. There's usually no immediate danger at the mall, except at obvious stationary points.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I love how some commenters in this article talk about how the parents should have anticipated the 300 lb security robot might be a hazard for their kid, and taken steps to keep their kid away from it.
You have a shiny, light-flashing robot that looks similar to EVA from Wall-E and designed to look friendly and nice. You better design the robot to safely handle kids coming up to it if you are putting it in a mall. The argument that kids should not be brought to malls is stupid. Who do you think malls target to bring money to them if not parents of kids, especially mothers of small children?
Good luck being the mall that says they don't care about child safety and keep away from our robots or we will run over you.
The parents should control their kids around unknown hazards. Any child big enough to walk is big enough to hold hands.
Learn to love Alaska