Robot 'drowns' in fountain mishap
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Image copyrightMELISSA MORALES
Image captionThe Knightscope K5 robot tumbled into the fountain by accident
A security robot in Washington DC suffered a watery demise after falling into a fountain by an office building.
The stricken robot, made by Knightscope, was spotted by passers-by whose photos of the aftermath quickly went viral on social media.
For some, the incident seemed to sum up the state of 21st Century technology.
"We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots,"
on Twitter.
Image copyrightMELISSA MORALES
Image captionRescuers soon appeared to retrieve the fallen bot
"Steps are our best defence against the Robopocalypse,"
- author of Wired for War, a book about military robotics.
It is not the first accident involving Knightscope's patrolling robots, which are equipped with various instruments - including face-recognition systems, high-definition video capture, infrared and ultrasonic sensors.
Last year,
by one of the autonomous devices in a Silicon Valley shopping centre.
And earlier this year,
after attacking a Knightscope robot.
The man, who was drunk at the time of the incident, later said he wanted to "test" the machine, according to Knightscope.
