Man arrested for drunken attack on robot
Man arrested for drunken attack on robot
Well obviously this is a story from Japan. Yokosuka, to be exact.
On the morning of 6 September, 60-year-old Kiichi Ishikawa entered a SoftBank Corp. store in what the Japanese Times reports was a "drunken" state.
Perhaps he was hoping to open a new telephone contract to phone home for a lift? Perhaps he was spoiling for a fight. We're not sure.
According to the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, Ishikawa became annoyed with a human store clerk - finding their attitude disagreeable.
We're with you there Ishikawa, all that "the clerk at window seven will see you now" is most irksome.
However, rather than communicating his frustration in a mature manner befitting his senior years, Ishikawa turned to one of the store's emotion-sensing Pepper robots, and proceeded to give it a good kicking.
The police were called, arresting the pensioner after security footage allegedly showed the human-on-robot fight taking place. Ishikawa is even said to have admitted to the crime, which left the Pepper social droid severely damaged - moving at a slower pace with potential software issues.
SoftBank employs a number of the Pepper humanoid robots, which are designed to register the emotions of humans and interact with them via a series of question-and-answer scenarios enacted by a smart screen on its chest. They're like android Teletubbies - look...
Who'd want to kick that?
