Security robot falls into pond after failing to spot stairs or water

A security robot tasked with patrolling an office building in Washington DC has instead driven itself into a water feature.

The bot appears to have been a Knightscope K5, a surveillance bot designed to roll around “parking lots, corporate campuses and hospitals” so it can use its video cameras, anomaly detection, live video streaming and real-time notifications capabilities to inform you if you need to send a human security guard to sort something out.

Knightscope says the bot can find a way through “even the most complex environments”. But not, evidently, the water feature of The Washington Harbour, an office and retail complex in Washington, DC. As the Tweet below shows, the K5 decided to take a dip in said water feature.

Knightscope told The Washington Post that the incident was “an isolated event”.

The company's also been good-humoured about the incident, responding to social media jibes with a riposte that the K5 is a security robot, not a submarine robot. ®