A robot has been arrested while taking part in a political rally in Russia, after police intervened to prevent it from interacting with the public.
According to reports, the activist robot called Promobot manufactured by a Russian company of the same name was detained by police as it interspersed with the crowd at a rally in support of Russian Parliamentary candidate Valery Kalachev in Moscow.
Adding to the bizarre situation is the fact that this is the same model of robot that previously tried to escape twice from its manufacturer. Before its arrest, the Promobot was busy “recording voters’ opinions on a variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate’s team”, a company spokesperson told Nathaniel Mott at Inverse.
While that might sound like some fairly harmless (and not particularly unlawful) activity, it seems to have been enough to raise the ire of local authorities, who moved in to apprehend the robotic troublemaker. “Police asked to remove the robot away from the crowded area, and even tried to handcuff him,” the company told Inverse.
“According to eyewitnesses, the robot did not put up any resistance.” Given the totally peaceful nature of Promobot’s role in the rally, conducting voluntary surveys in a public place — it’s tempting to conclude that the poor droid got a pretty bum rap here. It’s been suggested that Promobot may have been dobbed in by a member of the public viewing the scene, as “perhaps this action wasn’t authorised,” a company representative suggested.
If that’s true, it seems Promobot’s arrest was largely the result of human error. Maybe Kalachev’s people just didn’t get around to filing the right paperwork in Moscow before taking their robot out to press the flesh? “People like robots, they are easy to get along with,” the candidate told media. “There are a few Promobots working for us which are collecting people’s demands and wishes at the moment.”
If Promobot looks a little familiar to you, that’s not all too surprising, because it isn’t the first time this robotic scofflaw has had a run-in with the cops. A Promobot model made international headlines earlier in the year after it tried to escape its home — a research facility in Perm, Russia, twice in one month. With that model, the company’s engineers had tried to reprogramme the robot so that it didn’t keep making its bids for freedom, but without success.
Source:www.sciencealert.com
