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Crime Robotics

Someone Called the Cops On Their Own Smart Vacuum (androidpolice.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the robber-or-robot dept.
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.
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Someone Called the Cops On Their Own Smart Vacuum More

Someone Called the Cops On Their Own Smart Vacuum

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  • Happened before (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @06:40AM (#61308142)

    Strange, this happened already like 2 years back: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Did they shoot it?!

      • The summary says that they "couldn't make out the make and model of the robovac", so probably yes, quite a few times.

        • 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

      • Did they shoot it?!

        Roombas are black, so yes, the cops probably shot it.

        Or at least kneeled on it until it turned off.

        • It fell down the stairs. Roombas don't fall down stairs.

          • 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.

        • 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.

      • 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)

          by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @03:18PM (#61309406)

          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 ...)

    • It was stupid then and it's stupid now.

  • Third-world countries (Score:3)

    by kvutza ( 893474 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @06:44AM (#61308150)
    I guess it's common for third-world countries that robovac-like sounds have high probabilities of coming from a burglary.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      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)

    by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @06:45AM (#61308152) Homepage
    Most robovacs use a system which is the same as in a mouse from 20+ years ago to measure travelled distance. The front wheel is half-white/half-black and there is an IR sensor to count the revs.

    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).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      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?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        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.

      • ... i also need a distance sensor cleaning robot too?

        Close. You need a socially distanced sensor cleaning robot.

    • It’s just saving $0.20 per robot by using sensor configurations that clog with dirt. If they had used a Hall effect sensor, unless it was sweeping up magnets the dust wouldn’t matter. If only the people designing these vacuums realized they would become dirty...
      • It still clogs the axle and the wheel slips instead of rolling resulting in an erroneous measurement and a nearly guaranteed jump down the staircase. It is a reality - they are nice devices, but they need their maintenance same as any other mechanical device.
        • So the people that programmed it had the quick thinking to engage the motors and keep going despite a lack of proper feedback that is obviously an error? If this happens it should ask for cleaning if it doesn’t have a way to do it automatically. This is maybe acceptable on a grad student project but not a polished product. Yeah, even a proper design will eventually need cleaning but I lose patience with products where there is no real reason the sensors should foul or it should have such poor error

  • That's why Daleks learned to fly.

    https://punch.photoshelter.com... [photoshelter.com]

  • Will we never learn the lessons of Robocop??? [wikipedia.org]
    • A more apropos film did it first: Runaway [wikipedia.org].
    • Edward Neumeier Robocop as political satire is has become a reality, not in a comical violence, but the corrupt nature of city politicians when it comes to spending. A earlier community based policing effort evolved to a untenable Detroit when the unarmed social worker went on strike. The remaining dead enders of the city population were easily controlled by a corporate interest using the city as its RD piggybank and stepping stone for more municipal clientele with deep pockets and no practical publi
  • FTFA:

    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

  • You never see these kind of problems in I' Robot.

  • Not As Dumb As (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Saturday April 24, 2021 @08:38AM (#61308306)

    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.

    • With all the protests about police using excessive force, I'm surprised that she didn't check out the sounds herself. It would have saved the police a trip, and maybe saved her some embarrassment.
    • Hilarious, she's so ugly she thinks she's a man.

  • 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.

  • So I guess it's true (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nature abhors a vacuum.

  • Then it might have been plausible.

  • Dumbass's gotta dumbass

  • Having a dog would have solved this with out the police. Companionship plus alarm, its simple really.

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