A couple of years ago, Knightscope gleefully announced its new "crimefighting robot", the K5. It's not an Artificial Intelligence robot (soooooooo obvious - we get to that part later), but K5 can "see, feel, hear, and smell".

The bright idea was to have the robot patrol malls, office buildings, etc., collecting information to predict the likelihood of an impending crime. (Uh, yeah, right.) It then shares the info with the human security force that it will soon replace works with.

You ever owned one of those vacuum 'bots? They get lost under the couch, get stuck in corners, or just fritz out and sit there like a super expensive doorstop. If you've seen one of these "intelligent" devices in inaction, you can guess where I'm headed...

This is one of those Things that always goes just about like so:

          Step One: Have Bright Idea
          Step Two: Implement Bright Idea
          Step Three: Suffer Epic Fail
          Step Four: Endure Endless Internet Ridicule.

Sooooooooo this particular Bright Idea, K5, was "on patrol" in an office building in D.C. when it fell down some stairs, landed in a fountain, and "drowned".

You can also guess what happened next: the Web went stark raving mad with glee over the Fallen 'Bot's Epic Fail.

One Twitter user who (like me) clearly expected (and deserved) to be living the George Jetson lifestyle by the 21st century said: "We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots."  Another tweeted: "Have you thought about getting a lifeguard robot to keep the security robots from drowning?" Dozens (I suspect security personnel) implied that the K5 couldn't 'stand' its menial existence anymore so it drowned itself on purpose.

If K5 and my vagrant vacuum 'bot are predictions of the future, we might never get our flying cars. But on the bright side: it'll be a long, long, LONG time before the robot army rises to destroy us all. So...that's someThing, right?

See you next week,
Bobby