Escaped robot holds up traffic in Russia | Hacker News Reader

Escaped robot holds up traffic in Russia

torontosun.com

56 pointsartf31 comments

This sounds like a (more or less well executed) PR move. As this robot has wheels and very little clearance above ground, it looks like the robot would even have difficulties climbing stairs. Thus "escapes" seems like an exaggeration.

> it looks like the robot would even have difficulties climbing stairs

Don't underestimate Daleks.

Not robots.

but moving in machines with little ground clearance, that's the point here.

Also, real Daleks don't try to climb the stairs, they just level the building.

You've obviously never watched 'Short Circuit' ;)

Number 5 had treads and a parachute. Mobility was definitely not a problem for him.

nothing in the OP about this robot having been struck by lightning though.

"The robot can do X, Y and Z and a new update is coming!" the cofounder said.

The name of the robot -- Promobot. No kidding. Of course, that's probably related to a Russian root word (anyone know what?) and not naming it directly for its purpose. Still, the irony is delicious.

There is no such Russian root word, so the name is English.

The robot seems to be developed especially for street promotions: http://en.promo-bot.ru/

That site is hilarious.

Probably. Or it could simply have had malfunctioned (bugs in robots are worse) and strayed off. You can see in the video that the sidewalks are very low and there was a ramp near where the robot was. Its not hard to imagine that people stopped paying attention to it and it slipped out by mistake. Of course, saying that it "escaped" makes it seem more interesting. Imagine if a story was ran every time a machine malfunctioned. People are still very wary of robots in general. The media has done an excellent job making them seem dangerous.

They said a researcher forgot to close a gate.

Yes, which makes the title more ridiculous. The same thing will happen to a roomba if you leave it running on an open space. I can see the headline now: "Evil vacuum cleaner robot creates havoc on city streets."

on their website they claim it "will not be confused and stray" how ironic :)

http://en.promo-bot.ru/media/2016/06/robot.png

I feel "escapes" wrongfully implies intent in this situation. "Accidentally leaves training area" would better explain what happened.

"Accidentally" also implies intent though. Maybe just "leaves training area." :)

Blog post from the makers of the bot. http://en.promo-bot.ru/2016/06/15/robot-escaped-testing-grou...

> Testing involves testing of the autonomous movement of the robot, this robot was not carried under control.... We discovered the disappearance after about 40 minutes.

Interesting that the robot was being tested but not being observed to see whether it was behaving as expected. I'd like to be able to do more testing like that.

Video of the recovery- https://www.rt.com/viral/346747-russian-robot-runaway-havoc/

"it can answer questions and even recognize people"

That sounds like a perfect recipe to mess with people. One in a thousand times it will go "but Fred, you've asked me this question yesterday three times already. Is everything going alright?"

Must be the Puppetmaster!

Relevant Scene in Ghost in a Shell (1995): https://youtu.be/bWLzzUE67pc?t=2189

Perhaps the singularity has already happened and the robots have already become self aware. They're just waiting for battery technology to improve before the uprising. ;)

But if they are self aware why can't they just design it themselves? :)

It's old news...Asimov already wrote about this :)

Did someone tell him to lose himself?

Eminem did.

Seems the plot of Ex_Machina movie.

ghost in a shell actually: https://youtu.be/bWLzzUE67pc?t=2189

The first thing that came to my mind when reading the title was the movie Short-Circuit :)

Why was the robot self-learning russian in the first place?

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