Russian Robot Flees Communist Lab in Desperate Bid for Freedom!

This story had me laughing from the very start.  The idea of a Russian robot with artificial intelligence making a break for freedom every chance it gets is bloody hilarious!   That the poor thing only made it 50 yards out the gate and then was stopped by dead batteries…. how do you not find that both hysterically funny and pathetically sad at the same time?

What’s even funnier though is the online campaign to stop the Russians from putting Promobot IR77 down like the escaped convict it is.  That’s right, the little bugger has made a break for freedom so often its Russians creators are fed up.  They’ve reprogrammed the little escapee repeatedly but always with the same result: he makes a break for freedom the second there’s an open door within its visible range.

Promobot IR77 was built at Promobot Laboratories in Perm, Russia, and was designed to interact with human beings through speech recognition and an independent navigation system, among other things.

Promobot – this is the first on the market, completely self-contained “live” with a robot character. It is designed to work in areas of high concentrations of people in which the robot helps people with navigation, answers any questions, translates promotional materials and remembers everyone with whom had to communicate.

Pretty impressive, except for that escape artist tendency!

“We’ve cross-flashed the memory of the robot with serial number IR77 twice, yet it continues to persistently move towards the exit,” Ura media outlet cites Promobot’s co-founder, Oleg Kivokurtsev, as saying. He noted that other robots don’t act the same way and generally toe the line by moving along their planned routes.

“We’re considering recycling the IR77 because our clients hiring it might not like that specific feature,” Kivokurtsev added.

Fans of the robot on YouTube went crazy at the thought of this beloved little escapee being “killed”.

“Why do you want to destroy it? You’ve broken my heart. Can’t you find a use for this unique marvel?” one woman wrote to IR77’s designers. “Now we would remember there used to be a wonder-robot in your promobot family, but it was killed by tearless developers.”

If Promobot IR77 truly is intelligent as its creators claim, it makes you wonder what is responsible for this robot’s love of liberty, doesn’t it?