A Knightscope K5 security robot at Stanford Shopping Center knocked down a 16-month-old boy and ran over his foot, causing swelling and scrapes.
On July 7, 2016, at approximately 2:39 PM PDT, a Knightscope K5 security robot at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California collided with 16-month-old Harwin Cheng. The robot, which stands 5 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds, was developed by Mountain View startup Knightscope and had been deployed at the mall since 2015. According to the child's mother Tiffany Teng, the robot hit her son's head, causing him to fall face down, then continued moving forward and ran over his right foot. The incident resulted in swelling to the child's foot and scrapes on his leg, though no broken bones occurred. Knightscope's account differs slightly, stating the child ran backwards into the robot's front quarter, but acknowledged the machine's sensors registered no vibration alert and motors did not fault as they should when encountering an obstacle. A mall security guard reportedly told the family this was the second such incident involving a child and the same robot unit within days. Stanford Shopping Center suspended all K5 robots pending investigation. Knightscope stated this was their first reported incident after 35,000 hours of operation and 25,000 miles traveled, and extended a formal apology while inviting the family to their headquarters.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed