Man vs. Machine: Robot Calls Police After Being Attacked By Drunk Man

A drunk man reportedly ran into an armless K5 robot in the Knightscope parking lot in Mountain View, California and met his match. The April incident occurred after 41-year-old Jason Sylvain tipped over the 300-pound robot. Unfortunately, when the roving security robot found itself off-balance, the K5 called the police and signaled for help.

The company spokesman Stacy Dean Stephens said that members of the robot company Knightscope — which developed the robot that appears similar to the iconic Star Wars droid R2D2 — came out and detained Sylvain as the police came.

"We found a guy who just knocked over our robot," said Stephens to CNBC Bay Area on April 25. "He tried to get away, but we detained him and then we got Mountain View police on the phone. The bad guy learned the robot does security. It did what it was designed to do."

The police arrived and Sylvain was arrested for prowling and being drunk in public. A spokeswoman noted how he looked when they arrested him.

"When we arrived, we met with Sylvain, and as we were speaking with him, he appeared confused, had red, glassy eyes and a strong odor of alcohol emitted from him," the police spokeswoman told CNET on April 25.

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Knightscope is a company based in Silicon Valley and develops fully autonomous robots, known as the K5 Beta Prototype and has been used for security purposes in schools, businesses, and neighborhoods. The robot stands at five feet tall and weighs 300 pounds. When it detects abnormal noise and temperature change — or criminals — it will automatically alert authorities.

The company developed the robot security guards in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old before committing suicide when the police arrived.

The CEO of the company, William Santana Li, said that the hope for the prototype was to rid schools of the need for an armed officer, and believes that these robots can change the face of the neighborhood watch.

"Criminals are looking for the path of least resistance…Are you really going to go into a community with 200 droids roaming around? No, you’re going to go into the next neighborhood," Li said.

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There was another incident in July 2016, when the K5 prototype had a collision with 16-month-old Harwin Cheng at the Stanford Shopping Center in California, where the robot was being used for security.

"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, according to a report by ABC 7.

Harwin also got a scrape on his leg from the incident. "He was crying like crazy and he never cries. He seldom cries," the child's mother continued.