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Parents Upset After Their Boy Was 'Knocked Down and Run Over' By A Security Robot (abc7news.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the lawsuit-in-the-making dept.

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.

12 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Obvious joke... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

    1. Re:Obvious joke... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, wasn't it a robot overchild.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  2. Think of it as evolution in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. Not Kid Proof by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. I call bullshit! by freeze128 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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

  5. Bot manufacturer's press release here: by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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    1. Re:Bot manufacturer's press release here: by larryjoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  6. What the hell are you on about? by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

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    1. Re:What the hell are you on about? by Octorian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:What the hell are you on about? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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  7. Re:The 3 laws of robotics ? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  8. Re:Why by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.