A robot hurt a 7-year-old boy by pulling and breaking his finger during a chess match at the Moscow Open.
A video monitored the details of the match when the robot held the child’s finger firmly for seconds severalbefore a woman and two men rush to rescue the child, free him from his grasp, and push him away.
Jesus… A robot broke kid‘s finger at Chess Tournament in Moscow @elonmusk @MagnusCarlsen
There is no violence in chess, they said.
Come and play, they said. https://t.co/W7sgnxAFCi pic.twitter.com/OVBGCv2R9H
— ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????? (@russian_market) July 21, 2022
Sergey Lazarev, head of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the Russian TASS news agency that the robot had participated in previous matches without any disturbance.
And local media pointed out that the robot did this behavior “due to a defect and a state of instability due to the rapid reactions of the child during the match.”
Lazarev confirmed that the child’s finger was placed in a “gypsum” mold, and that he does not suffer from trauma as a result of the attack on him.
He explained that the child participated in new matches the day following the incident, and was able to finish the tournament.
For his part, Sergey Smagin, vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, said that the robot appeared to pounce on the child following taking one of the boy’s chess pieces.
He pointed out that the boy, “instead of waiting for the robot to complete its movement, chose a quick response, which is a violation of safety rules.”
However, he noted during his speech that the child “did not realize that he had to wait before responding to the robot.”
“This is a very rare case, and it is the first case I can remember of a robot assaulting a young child,” he added, stressing that the robot was “absolutely safe,” and that what happened was a “coincidence.”
It is noteworthy that robots kill one person every year in the United States alone, according to the American Occupational Safety Administration, especially in light of the severe complexity witnessed by the manufacture of robots and their integration into human lives in recent years.