“Avoid robots,” Oregon State University (United States) warned on Twitter on October 24 following a bomb threat regarding its food delivery robots circulating around campus. Half an hour later, the school clarified that it was “remotely isolating the robots in a secure location” and that campus police were investigating the scene. People on campus were asked to be more alert “for suspicious activity.” A technician was then tasked with inspecting the robots one by one.
“All food and beverage orders were canceled immediately once the threat was received, and refunds were processed using the original payment method for each order,” the statement from the university spokesperson said. The latter reported that no bomb was found and that a suspect in this crime had been arrested.
Starship Technologies, the company behind these robots, told the American site Insider that this commotion is the result of a prank by a student. He also explains that he saw a student on social media who claimed to have planted a bomb in one of the robots, but later admitted that he was joking. Founded in 2014, Starship operates a food delivery service via autonomous robots on behalf of several American college campuses.
“The robots have mapped the campus using GPS and can find locations using a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence and sensors,” a video from The Oregonian details.
Students defend robots
A freshman contacted by Insider explained, however, that there was no panic on campus the day of the bomb threat. Some “continued to order food” from the temporarily disabled machines. “Many of us think robots are cute and that’s why we feel bad for them,” the student explained. “They are just trying to do their job the best they can and have been used as a means to create (or attempt to create) fear.”
Others simply mocked the situation, referring to the imagination of the technological singularity addressed by cult science fiction films like Terminator or I, Robot, in which robots would become “autonomous” and out of control.
In 2022, Starship robots had already gone viral when a man in Northampton (UK) spotted one lost in the woods. And already at that time, the little robot was compared more to Wall-E than to the Terminator.
Source: BFM TV
