Meanwhile in Russia: Self-learning Robot Escapes for 45 Minutes

In the recent frenzy of questionable robotic motives, a Russian self-learning robot escaped a training compound before engineers were able to bring it back home.

Artificially intelligent (AI) robots have demonstrated some incredibly peculiar traits between Microsoft’s AI bot turning into a racist-human-hating robot in 24 hours and DARPA announcing their plan for a 132-foot “stalker” warship to hunt the seas for enemies. Whatever the case may be, the age of robotic automation has begun.

Similar to the outpour in AI robots, the Promobot has made recent news after escaping a training ground. On Tuesday, June 14, Engineers at the Promobot headquarters were carrying out tests where the robot was “taught” how to navigate around objects on the premise to better optimize and coordinate the robot’s AI system. Following the tests, a robotic engineer left the testing grounds and forgot to close the gates behind him. The robot, who had not turned off quietly followed the engineer outside the text field, driving over fifty meters, and then entered a roadway where its unplanned excursion came to an end due to dead batteries. It was then discovered over 40 minutes later that the robot was missing, and engineers soon after discovered the robot in the middle of the road, holding up traffic.

“The robot was learning automatic movement algorithms on the testing ground, these functions will feature in the latest version of the Promobot”

Oleg Kivokurtsev, co-founder of the robot’s maker, tells ura.ru news agency,

“Our engineer drove onto the testing ground and forgot to close the gates. So the robot escaped and went on his little adventure”

The robot caused a traffic jam of pedestrians and cars, but not necessarily because of its positioning. As people passed by, they took to their phones to record the ordeal as children stopped to try and play with the robot.

As a result of the excursion and the engineer forgetting about the gates, reprimands were made by the police and the testing facility was forced to relocate. However, engineers are taking the experience in a positive light as the robot did not crash into any people or cars, and did not cause any damage, making them feel quite accomplished.

The robot is still undergoing tests as a marketing robot to provide all kinds of services to customers, as well as advertising. More information can be found at the Promobot website. While some say the incident was caused by the robots intentions to escape the “robot prison”, others believe the ordeal was set up as a publicity stunt.