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.

Comments

Obvious joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

Re:Obvious joke...

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, wasn't it a robot overchild.

Re:Obvious joke...

[Gamasta]

Also the robot clearly violated the first law of robotics and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Why

[Anonymous Coward]

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!"

Re:Why

[bjwest]

My concern is why did these parents let their 16 month old child far enough away from them that it got run over by a 300 lb robot? Do they often let their toddler run unwatched (by them) in a mall full of strangers?

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't have a toddler, and should therefore just STFU. They are fast little monsters who don't obey orders.

Re:Why

[Ash-Fox]

That's why you leash them, silly billy!

Re:Why

[bjwest]

That is what strollers are for. You should not allow your 16 month old baby to run freely in a crowded mall, especially in todays world, and you most definitely don't allow them to run freely around a 300 pound robot not designed to be an entertainment device for children.

Re:Why

[phorm]

Spoken as somebody who is probably not a parent.
No, should probably shouldn't let your child run amock, but allowing your kid to walk without being tethered isn't a bad thing, and normally the biggest concerns are keeping him/her away from the escalators or other major stationary hazards. That and making sure the kiddo doesn't run into people, but humans have their own collision avoidance that apparently works better than this robot.

Re:Why

[bjwest]

No, should probably shouldn't let your child run amock, but allowing your kid to walk without being tethered isn't a bad thing, ...

It was in this case. I think the only concern for a parent is to keep their child safe from all hazards. Would you blame the escalator company or mall if you're in an unfamiliar mall and your child fell down the escalator you didn't know was five feet from you? I'm sorry, but there is no excuse for a toddler getting hurt in a mall that takes full blame away from the parent/guardian who's care that child is currently in. By all means, let your child run free and explore - in areas that are safe to do so, but do not take your child and allow it to wonder off while you're looking at the blingidy bling in the window.

Re:Why

[thegarbz]

especially in todays world

Explain this one to me? What is it about today's world that makes it more dangerous to a child? Robot overloads excepted of course.

Actually the robot worked perfectly

[Applehu Akbar]

It detected that he was Asian, so it didn't shoot.

Think of it as evolution in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually children will evolve a mechanism to prevent them being run over by wayward security robots, and the strong will survive.

Re:Think of it as evolution in action

[Mr D from 63]

and when this kid grows up, the same robot will take his job.

Why do I get the feeling...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

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.

Re:Why do I get the feeling...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would expect a 16 month old to do exactly that. I wouldn't expect that his parents would be so irresponsible to allow him to do it though.

The wave of the future

[Bruce Perens]

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.

Re:The wave of the future

[Bruce Perens]

Also, read Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities Per State

Re:The wave of the future

[safetyinnumbers]

I'm hoping that advances in genetic engineering will allow us to finally realize Ford's dream of building a better horse.

Not Kid Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not Kid Proof

[Tablizer]

Or, how about a plastic wedge shape to push stuff to the side, somewhat like choo-choo-train* cow-catchers. Then you don't need bump sensors, except maybe the tip.

* That's an official technical term, trust me

Re:Not Kid Proof

[Dunbal]

Or a low level buzz saw attachment. The robot could also say "Exterminate! Exterminate!" over a speaker system. That should encourage the parents to keep the kids away.

who edits these days?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:software crossover

[93 Escort Wagon]

Maybe it was running on the Tesla autopilot algorithm!

Not possible - it ran over the kids foot, but left his head intact.

Re:Trust Issues

[PRMan]

Follow the robot around the mall playing ShatteringGlass.wav on your phone.

I call bullshit!

[freeze128]

"He was crying like crazy and he never cries."

Really? A 16 month old child that never cries? I don't believe that.

Re:I call bullshit!

[angel'o'sphere]

I know plenty of little children that never cry.

Treat them properly and they don't cry, why should they?

Re:I call bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know plenty of little children that never cry.

Treat them properly and they don't cry, why should they?

I call BS on this. Kids cry when they don't get what they want. They cry when they are getting tired. They cry when someone else gets what they want. They cry when they have too much food on their plate. They cry when they don't have enough on their plate. They cry when they get hurt. They cry when they are startled. They cry when they have a bad experience. They cry when they hurt themselves.

Kids are going to cry no matter how "perfect" of a parent you are, even if you are spoiling them by bending to every single one of their wishes (that can make crying even more common). You may end up with the perfect kid that quickly grasps the concept that crying because they don't get what they want doesn't work but that still doesn't stop the from crying when they hurt themselves..

Re:I call bullshit!

[Ogive17]

Mine rarely cried at that age, they are so use to falling over and bumping into things that it became second nature to get a small boo-boo.

Now he's 3.5, when he cries, it's bloody murder.

Being hit could have happened with a human too

[mark-t]

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.

The 3 laws of robotics ?

[Archfeld]

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.

Re:The 3 laws of robotics ?

[Jason Levine]

As a parent (albeit one whose kids are older), little kids are surprisingly fast. One moment of distraction and your child can vanish. After two incidents with my youngest the same day - once when he decided to play hide & seek in a store (the laughing coat rack gave him away) and once when he walked off as we put his older brother's coat on (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally just picked him up when he got halfway through the store without even looking back) - we decided to do something I thought was stupid pre-kids. We got one of those backpacks with a "leash" on it. (It was a monkey and the parent holds the long tail.) This let my son wander out of hand-holding range but still let us be sure that he was close by us.

And while I'm on the subject of "special powers" little kids have, they can also reach things that you swear are completely out of their reach. My oldest proved this when he was able to get to the "completely out of the kids' reach" scissors and give himself a haircut as we bathed his brother.

Re:The 3 laws of robotics ?

[William Baric]

No, little kids are not surprisingly fast, they are quite slow compared to an adult, they are only unpredictable. That's why parents hold the hands of their kids in places where it can be dangerous.

Bot manufacturer's press release here:

[Ellis D. Tripp]

http://www.businesswire.com/ne...

Re:Bot manufacturer's press release here:

[larryjoe]

The mom said, "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." This is in direct contrast to what the robot company said, so one of the accounts is not accurate.

The robot company also said, "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." To make a statement about the orientation of the boy requires video (or at least some other electronic detection). Furthermore, the company said, "The machine’s sensors registered no vibration alert and the machine motors did not fault as they would when encountering an obstacle." So, there is some form of an electronic record of what the robot sensed.

Did the parents or any other human claim to have seen the moment of impact? I don't read any direct claim of an eyewitness account.

What the hell are you on about?

[rsilvergun]

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?

Re:What the hell are you on about?

[Octorian]

Why is everybody's kneejerk reaction to blame the parent?

Because no one doing the blaming actually has children, or remembers what its like to have small children, or has ever actually had to chase a toddler around. ...though some of them will likely claim to have said experiences, and think that anyone who doesn't keep their child on a dog leash is a horrible parent...

Re:What the hell are you on about?

[Jason Levine]

though some of them will likely claim to have said experiences, and think that anyone who doesn't keep their child on a dog leash is a horrible parent...

And then there are the "parenting experts" (who have never had kids, mind you) who will proclaim that putting a child on a leash is horrible parenting. So the parent is supposed to always be watching the child - oh, wait. That's helicopter parenting and that's bad. So let your child roam free - but if your child gets hurt it's your fault for not paying close enough attention to them. No matter what parents do, there will always be some self-proclaimed expert who demands that the parents are to blame.

Full disclosure: Before I had kids, I thought those kid-leashes were a horrible idea. After my little guy ran off from us (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally picked him up halfway across the store), we got him a child-leash. It let him wander independently but within reason. We got the occasional dirty look, but more people commenting on how cute he was with his "monkey backpack" on. And it helped keep him safe. I wouldn't demand that all parents use one but they can be useful for some.

Re:bad parents

[ChrisMaple]

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.

Re:bad parents

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Sounds like a probable design oversight.

[jafiwam]

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!

Re:Sounds like a probable design oversight.

[david_thornley]

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.