Tech

The ‘Michael Scofield’ Of Robots Arrested In Russia

Hemal Vora
First Posted: Sep 22, 2016 04:31 AM EDT

In a bizarre incident, a Robot was arrested in Russia for taking part in a political rally. The Robot, who draws inspiration from 'Michael Scofield' of Prison break fame, became famous worldwide when it tried to break out of its facilities, twice.

The rogue robot in an earlier incident has escaped from its facilities in Perm. Both times the Robot was captured and returned back to the lab. The makers had promised to destroy it if it ever escaped again. It did not run again evading the death penalty threat by its manufacturers.

This time around the Robot traveled to Moscow, thankfully accompanied by a technician to attend a rally for Russian Parliament candidate Valery Kalachev. According to the Spokesperson of the company PromoBot, it was collecting voter opinions "for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team." As reported by the inverse.

The police tried to arrest the robot after someone in the crowd complained about a robot recording voter opinions. The police tried to remove the Robot and since arresting a robot not being an everyday thing even tried to handcuff the robot.  As Gizmodo reported, the robot did not put up a fight when it was being arrested.

Although a robot recording statements in a completely peaceful manner is not an offense, Promobot company representatives stated, the reason of robot being arrested was, it did not have proper authorization and the paperwork.

There are also speculations that all the run-ins with the law by the robot are a publicity stunt by the company Promobot, to make its robot a household name worldwide. In a similar incident of Robot interacting with the public, Russian entrepreneur Ivan Noskov had programmed a robot, installed Pokemon GO, and let it loose in Siberia to play the game.

With Robots bound to become part of our lives in the future, there is a clear need to develop laws for robots to protect us from them and vice versa.  With some guidelines in place we can at least hope, next time  the 'Michael Scofield' of robots is arrested , it would not be incarcerated without representations.

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