Source:
https://scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2091091/silicon-valley-engineer-was-arrested-after-allegedly-knocking-down
Tech

A Silicon Valley engineer was arrested after allegedly knocking down a 300-pound robocop

Company says robot has ‘recuperated from his injuries’ and is back on patrol

Photo: Knightscope

Robots may have more to fear from humans than humans do from robots, depending on your reaction to an incident that allegedly took place last week mere miles away from the Silicon Valley headquarters of Microsoft and Google.

A 41-year old hardware engineer reportedly knocked down a security robot outside the headquarters of a start-up called Knightscope, Mountain View police told Business Insider.

Knightscope makes robots that look a little like R2-D2 from Star Wars. Their most famous unit, K5, is a five-foot tall, 300-pound machine designed to wander around corporate campuses and malls, scanning the area with a camera and calling security if anything is out of the ordinary.

It was one of these K5 robots that was allegedly knocked down last Wednesday by the hardware engineer, according to ABC7, which first reported the incident.

Police say they arrived to Knightscope at 8:15pm local time, and found a Knightscope employee detaining the hardware engineer, who police said smelled strongly of alcohol.

Police say that the 41-year-old knocked over a robot in the start-up’s front parking lot and that the hardware engineer never got into the Knightscope headquarters. He was arrested for alleged prowling and public intoxication.

“The robot did exactly as it was suppose to do – the ‘assault’ was detected and immediately reported, the alarms on the robot sounded, the suspect attempted to flee the scene and was detained by one of my colleagues and me until the Mountain View Police arrived,” Stacy Stephens, the VP of marketing and sales at Knightscope told Business Insider in a statement.

“We are incredibly proud of the outcome and believe this to be a true testament to the technology we developed here in Silicon Valley. We are equally happy to report that the robot has recuperated from his injuries and is back on patrol keeping our office and employees safe again,” he continued.

Here’s video of the robot back in fine working order:

Recently, Knightscope was in the headlines for one of its robots running over a child.