Someone Called the Cops On Their Own Smart Vacuum (androidpolice.com) 48
According to Sacramento CBS affiliate KOVR-TV, Yana Sydnor called the police to report a possible home invasion. Turns out, it was a robovac that her son turned on before leaving for the weekend. Android Police reports: At 1 a.m., she and her 2-year-old daughter woke up to loud booms coming from her stairs disrupting her meditation music. She texted her friends about the sounds before they quickly responded, urging her to call 911. "I hear someone walking down my stairs, so it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," Sydnor recalls telling the dispatcher. Desperate to exit the house and avoid a run-in with the invader, she ran to the bathroom, put her daughter in the tub, and thought about grabbing a ladder to get them both outside to ground level.
Officers arrived within 10 minutes of Sydnor's call. They rammed the front door wide open only to find a poor robovac, fresh from a tumble down a flight of stairs. "My son turned on the vacuum cleaner because he didn't want to do chores before he left for the weekend," she explained to the reporter after a moment of exasperated silence. The vacuum hadn't been used for 2 years and, even after the fall, it still works. We couldn't make out the make and model of the robovac, so we don't quite know if it could stop itself from going over the ledge much less what exactly happened in this case if it did have the ability.
Officers arrived within 10 minutes of Sydnor's call. They rammed the front door wide open only to find a poor robovac, fresh from a tumble down a flight of stairs. "My son turned on the vacuum cleaner because he didn't want to do chores before he left for the weekend," she explained to the reporter after a moment of exasperated silence. The vacuum hadn't been used for 2 years and, even after the fall, it still works. We couldn't make out the make and model of the robovac, so we don't quite know if it could stop itself from going over the ledge much less what exactly happened in this case if it did have the ability.
Happened before (Score:3)
Strange, this happened already like 2 years back: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Did they shoot it?!
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well.
as we all know.
law enforcement has only a second to make a decision.
but if one is thoughtless it should take less time.
but a vacuum that goes up and down stairs.
now.
i am listening
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Did they shoot it?!
Roombas are black, so yes, the cops probably shot it.
Or at least kneeled on it until it turned off.
Re: Happened before (Score:2)
It fell down the stairs. Roombas don't fall down stairs.
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Older roombas without the magnetic strip that creates a "wall" might - MIGHT... I'd expect it more from an older shark, as well. I'd think it could depend on several variables, as well. Mostly how much my asshole cat decides it needs to knock over the thing that interrupted its nap.
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Did they shoot it?!
Roombas are black, so yes, the cops probably shot it.
Or at least kneeled on it until it turned off.
Maybe it was full of fentanyl and had a history of bad behavior.
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I'm sure the county coroner will check the bin for fentanyl
Then the cops will try to sweep the whole thing under the rug
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Exactly. Inconveniencing the cops could easily have been avoided if only the folks had a nice shotgun, so they could have blown the damn thing to kingdom come, where it belongs anyway.
Re:Happened before (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly. Inconveniencing the cops could easily have been avoided if only the folks had a nice shotgun, so they could have blown the damn thing to kingdom come, where it belongs anyway.
And if there had been a second Roomba? Sounds improbable, but a friend of mine has 3.
(He got them to speed up the work, but is now regretting that because they unionized ...)
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Third-world countries (Score:3)
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I guess its common for people from whatever shithole you're from to be unable to read. It wasn't making robovac-like sounds.
Most robovacs have the ability, but lose it (Score:5, Informative)
If the sensor is full of fluff, it can't get things right even if the stairs ledge sensors (on its front edge facing down) detect a staircase, because it does not know what speed and distance it is travelling around the ledge when trying to clean as far as it can get. So it goes down the stairs.
It is one of the chores if you have a robot - to clean the distance sensor. If you do, they continue to work faithfully for years. One of my Roombas is now 14 years old and is still doing one floor of the house every day (it's now on its 3rd battery though).
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But.... i bought the robo vacuum so i don't have to do any cleaning! are you saying i also need a distance sensor cleaning robot too?
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You joke but if the bot has a base station then they could build in a nozzle to blast the sensor with air or since it shifts air about it could likely be engineered to do that itself.
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... i also need a distance sensor cleaning robot too?
Close. You need a socially distanced sensor cleaning robot.
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The vaccum, like former-officer/felon Chauvin, was never charged or accused of racism during procecution. No hate crime charges were filed against either of them.
Tsk tsk (Score:2)
We do not say "Bxxxx" or "Wxxxx"
We say "full visible spectrum non-reflective" or "full visible spectrum reflective"
Please, you are either part of the problem or you are the problem.
Well now ... (Score:2)
That's why Daleks learned to fly.
https://punch.photoshelter.com... [photoshelter.com]
The FOOLS! (Score:2)
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Meditation Music? (Score:2, Funny)
At 1 a.m., she and her 2-year-old daughter woke up to loud booms coming from her stairs disrupting her meditation music.
HIPSTER ALERT
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HIPSTER ALERT
Her daughter may be 2 years old, but - given it was her son who turned the device on before "leaving for the weekend", this is probably more apropos:
AGING HIPPIE ALERT
When appliances go bad. (Score:2)
You never see these kind of problems in I' Robot.
Not As Dumb As (Score:5, Insightful)
Still doesn't beat the person who called police on herself. LOL
Neighborhood security apps are making us wildly paranoid [theoutline.com]
Late last month, Samantha Kuhr called 911 in a frenzy — she'd just checked the Ring doorbell camera installed at her Hermosa Beach, CA home and seen a strange man walk through her front door. She begged them to send help, sure that she was in danger, until the dispatcher asked her to check the timestamp on the video. According to Ring, the intruder had entered 20 minutes ago. So he had been in the house for nearly a half-hour without being noticed?
It took Kuhr a moment to realize that the man in the security footage was her, and that she had called the cops on herself. Embarrassed, she instead asked that they not blacklist her for misusing 911.
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Reasonable (Score:1)
The article goes on to say that because the robovac was black the police shot it 14 times saying it pulled a gun on them. It was later shown to have drugs in its system and the police officers were put on 7-day paid leave and given coupons for Applebees.
Re: Great, more riots (Score:2)
So I guess it's true (Score:1)
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Was it a rape charge? (Score:1)
Then it might have been plausible.
Oh Well (Score:1)
Dumbass's gotta dumbass
Get a dog (Score:2)
Having a dog would have solved this with out the police. Companionship plus alarm, its simple really.