The self-taught Russian robot IR77 again “ran away” to freedom

What can you not think of for the sake of a beautiful story

From June 15 to June 20, many Russian and foreign media published the news that the new generation robot Promobot V3 with an artificial intelligence system and an integrated GPS navigator “escaped” from the test site of the Perm company Promobot. A copy of the IR77 left on the roadway, and there he ran out of battery power.

About the news they wrote technical media like Gizmodo , dozens of mass publications such as the British BBC , Mirror and the Daily Mail , not to mention Russian television channels like NTV .

The information was distributed by the press service of the Perm company Promobot: here is the message in the corporate blog of June 15. The company wrote that Promobot V3 “ran away” during the scheduled tests that take place before the official presentation of this model. During testing, the self-learning robot had to move around the neighborhood and recognize obstacles without unauthorized control. But one of the engineers of the company "accidentally" forgot to close the gates of the landfill. The robot took the opportunity and “ran away.”
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Surprisingly, the information is so widely sold through the media, despite all the signs of fake . The Promobot company maintains a blog in English, counting on a western audience. This is understandable, because the company planned to hold a presentation of the robot at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September.

The most interesting thing is that the news about the escape of the robot is equipped with high-quality photos from all angles (of course, with prudently removed metadata). And this is despite the fact that the absence of a robot was allegedly detected only 40 minutes after the escape.

The news was published the day after the incident, with all the photos and videos that passers-by allegedly took.

By the way, in all previous entries in the company's blog, the metadata of the photos are left untouched. Only in this record metadata removed.

Having “secretly” left the territory of the landfill, a copy of the IR77 drove about 50 meters, then drove into the middle of the street and stopped, because it ran out of battery power. According to the company, the robot “partially paralyzed” the traffic, blocked one of the lanes, and drivers on the other lanes braked to see the “unseen creature”.

“The clog was formed on the footpath,” the press service informs. “Passers-by took pictures, and the children begged their parents to play with the robot.” On Youtube from the Promobot account, they quickly posted a video with an "amateur" shooting of the incident.



In the end, the traffic police patrol drove up to the robot for review, and the engineer of the robotics company was reprimanded by the traffic police officer and was forced to write an explanatory note.

As already mentioned, this story has all the signs of fake. For example, in the following photo from the "scene" it can be seen that the robot has the screen and the monitor of the "face" turned on, although according to official legend, it has batteries.



In general, many of the media picked up such a wonderful story with pleasure, because it sounds so beautiful: an innocent robot with artificial intelligence escaped from the laboratory to freedom!



One could not pay attention to this PR action, if it had not been continued. What does the Promobot press service do next? A week later, when the response from the first news subsided and the frequency of mentioning in the media fell to almost zero, they spread the second news : the unfortunate robot V3 escaped from the test site again! And this is despite the fact that its maximum speed for documentation is 0.5 km / h .

As a result, after several attempts to "escape", the developers allegedly decided to dispose of an instance of the IR77!

“We have twice re-flashed the robot with the serial number IR77, but it continues to aggressively move to the exit from the landfill,” Oleg Kivokurtsev, the co-founder of Promobot, told the Russia Today television channel. “Now we are considering the possibility to dispose of the sample IR77, because the customers who will take it to their job may not like this feature.”

Words about the disposal of the robot were very much in place. Users were treated for almost two weeks with news and good work, who longed for freedom. Of course, in the comments to the video, some of them began to speak out that the "killing" of the robot was inhumane. Some ask to give the robot in good hands, like some kind of kitten.

Thus, the story was developed and it continues to be covered in the media. And there are all hints that this series will continue further. Soon we will learn new details about the fate of the unfortunate IR77. The press service of the Perm company Promobot can apply for a professional award in the field of public relations.



The story with the Permian robot is surprisingly reminiscent of another famous fake - about the mythical "friendship" of the tiger Amur and the goat Timur . This absolutely enchanting nonsense, a strange infopovod, was covered for several months by the largest Russian media. For example, only the RIA Novosti news agency published more than 100 informational materials (!) About the development of relations between a goat and a tiger, with all the nuances of their relationship, right up to slaps and choosing a place to sleep. The story, which was invented by the press secretary of the Primorsky safari park, Evgenia Patanovskaya, was covered on federal television channels as one of the most important topics (this was confirmed to us by several people who watch Russian television).

How to relate to such a story, which people like so much? Maybe it really doesn’t matter how true it is?