Incident 77: Knightscope's Park Patrol Robot Ignored Bystander Pressing Emergency Button to Alert Police about Fight

Description: A Knightscope K5 autonomous "police" robot patrolling Huntington Park, California failed to respond to an onlooker who attempted to activate its emergency alert button when a nearby fight broke out.

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Alleged: Knightscope developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Cogo Guebara and unnamed woman injured in the fight.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
77
Report Count
5
Incident Date
2019-10-04
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

A Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot was patrolling Salt Lake Park in Huntington Park, CA in fall 2018 when a fight broke out nearby. An onlooker pressed the emergency alert button on the K5, named HP RoboCop by the town, but the robot did not respond and returned to its patrol of the park. Knightscope says that the emergency alert feature was still under development and therefore the signal was not sent to local police.

Short Description

In Fall 2018, a Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot took no action to stop a nearby fight, despite an onlooker attempting to activate its emergency alert feature.

Severity

Unclear/unknown

AI System Description

Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot uses several environmental sensors and voice commands to conduct security operations.

System Developer

Knightscope

Sector of Deployment

Administrative and support service activities

Relevant AI functions

Perception, Cognition, Action

AI Techniques

unknown

AI Applications

Image classification, image recognition, facial recognition, speech recognition, self-driving, environment sensing

Location

Huntington Park, CA

Named Entities

Knightscope, Knightscope K5, HP RoboCop, Huntington Park, Salt Lake Park, Huntington Park Police Department, Cosme Lozano

Technology Purveyor

Huntington Park Police Department, Knightscope

Beginning Date

2018-01-01

Ending Date

2018-01-01

Near Miss

Unclear/unknown

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Data Inputs

LIDAR, sonar, video camera, vibration detection, thermal anomaly detection, automatic signal detection, audio

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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