This robot is designed to keep people safe in the US, but it fell in a fountain and couldn’t get up

By Antonio Villas-Boas

The Knightscope K5 security robot’s job is to be on the look out for crime. 

It might also want to keep an eye on where it’s going. 

Officer workers at the Georgetown Harbour office and retail space in Washington D.C. tweeted photos on Monday of the building’s K5 marooned and toppled over in a water fountain. The K5 is limbless, so it couldn’t lift itself out of the fountain, and good old fashioned humanity had to come to the rescue.

It was perfect fodder for comedic tweets: