Skip to main content

Steve the robot cop says he didn't see a 'no swimming' sign before impromptu dip

steve robot cop may work again k5 shrine
Knightscope
Steve the autonomous security robot made international headlines earlier this week after he accidentally toppled into a fountain while on duty at the Washington Harbour complex in Washington, D.C.

Left submerged and useless after water flooded his vital components (which is what tends to happen when land-based robots come into contact with liquids), a severely sodden Steve was hauled from the pool and returned to his maker for checks.

The company, a Silicon Valley-based outfit called Knightscope, has been developing its 6-foot, 400-pound “K5” robot cop since 2013. Clearly there is still work to be done.

When functioning properly, the sensor- and camera-equipped K5 works alongside human security personnel and is programmed to spot suspicious characters or behavior. But Steve was only a week into his first shift when he took an impromptu dip.

Knightscope said that a preliminary review of the data “suggests no foul play” — in other words, no one pushed Steve into the water. Although the company is currently trying to work out why Steve ended up in the fountain, it’s also been able to find time to smile about the embarrassing accident. On Thursday, it issued a news release revealing that Steve is in a “critical condition” and “on life support” at its headquarters, adding that another K5 will be taking Steve’s place at Washington Harbour following the “unauthorized and unscheduled submarine trials.”

‘Greatly exaggerated’

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Steve apparently said upon reboot. “I don’t remember seeing a ‘no swimming’ sign. Thank you to all the human life guards that pulled me out.”

Evidently one not to miss a marketing opportunity, Knightscope has set up a Twitter account for Steve — it’s called @K5steveisalive — so his newfound fans can receive updates on his recovery. It also released a photo (above) showing another K5 standing forlornly, if robots can stand forlornly, at a memorial for Steve. Even though he’s not dead yet.

While Steve’s mishap has certainly generated a few laughs among those who’ve been following the story, the unfortunate incident also highlights the challenges facing those companies engaged in the development of autonomous robots. Huge improvements have been made in recent years, and every malfunction, like Steve’s, can provide engineers with a trove of valuable data that’ll help push their technology to perfection. Eventually.

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more