The man, 41-year-old Jason Sylvain, was arrested for "prowling and public intoxication"– but not assault and battery on the battery-powered security guard. Sylvain's motivation for the crime is unknown, although sources that do not exist claim he had been binge-watching Westworld the night before and was filled with anti-robotic sentiment.
Locals were divided on Sylvain's Sarah Connor-esque robot violence. "It's a funny situation," said one. Eamonn Callon, another local who was definitely not an android spy, called it "a pretty pathetic incident because it shows how spineless the drunk guys in Silicon Valley really are because they attack a victim who doesn't even have any arms."
"I don't think this is a fair fight; really totally unacceptable," Callon said. The K5 was not seriously damaged, and is already back to patrolling.
The Knightscope is a fully autonomous robot equipped with sensors such as a video camera, radar, air quality sensors, and so on. Inspired by the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the prototype surveillance bots are meant to detect crimes and alert the authorities in advance.
Currently deployed in shopping malls and parking lots in California, the literal robocops are 5 feet tall, weigh about 300 pounds, and look kind of like a mix of a robot and a fancy vacuum cleaner.
The Knightscopes were in the news last July when one of them knocked a 16-month-old toddler over, running over his foot and violating Asimov's First Law of Robotics in the process. The boy was not seriously injured, and Knightscope has adjusted the robots since then to be more careful.
The robot/child conflict was previously observed in a 2015 study, wherein a group of Japanese researchers deployed a robot to an Osaka shopping center. The robot politely asked humans who crossed its path to move aside. While adults typically did so, children typically responded to the robot by refusing to move, attacking the robot with their tiny fists and feet, and peppering it with insults.
In the hilariously-named study, "Escaping from Children's Abuse of Social Robots," the Japanese researchers wrote that they would program future bots to avoid humans shorter than 4.6 feet tall.
So when it comes down to war between man and bot, it seems the soldiers representing our species will be children, drunks, and dwarves.
