A Knightscope K5 security robot fell down stairs into a fountain at the Washington Harbour complex in Washington DC and was unable to get back up, effectively ending its patrol duties.
On July 17, 2017, a Knightscope K5 security robot was patrolling the Washington Harbour office and retail complex in Georgetown, Washington DC when it fell down four steps into a fountain and became submerged. The 300-pound, 5-foot tall autonomous security robot had only been deployed at the location for a few days and was still in its mapping phase to become fully autonomous. The robot, nicknamed 'Steve' by office workers, was equipped with 360-degree cameras, microphones, thermal imaging, and license plate recognition capabilities. Office workers had to wade into the fountain to rescue the robot, which appeared to be permanently damaged by the water. Knightscope, the Silicon Valley startup that manufactured the robot, called it an 'isolated incident' and promised to deliver a replacement robot within the week at no charge. The incident went viral on social media with users joking about 'suicidal robots.' This was not the first incident for Knightscope robots - in 2016, a K5 ran over a 16-month-old child at Stanford Shopping Center, and in April 2017, a drunk man attacked one in a parking lot.
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
No population impact data reported.