People at a hot pot restaurant in California were met with an extraordinary sight recently–that of a dancing robot going wild and smashing some dishes. According to a video posted on Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu by user Meooow, the robot, at Haidilao, Cupertino, approached a table before pounding on it, then knocking over utensils and food in front of customers. Servers struggled to restrain the robot as it wildly danced.
Eventually, it took three servers to hold the robot by a strap on its neck, pulling it away from tables. It’s possible the robot — which appears to be an AgiBot X2 robot, which was featured at the CES conference in January according to TechCrunch — has a kill switch, but the staff might not have known how to operate it.
The restaurant said in a statement to NBC news that the robot “was not malfunctioning or out of control.” Hadilao said that the movements performed by the robot are preprogrammed, but were taking place in a “closer than usual environment.”
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“In this case, the robot was brought closer to a dining table at a guest’s request, which is not its typical operating setting,” the statement said. “The limited space affected its movements during the performance.”
Hadilao has long embraced artificial intelligence and robotics features in its restaurants around the world. This includes its restaurant in Beijing, which features robot servers and automatic broth-mixing machines.
NBC News chief tech analyst Joanna Stern said that this robot should have a kill switch, yet the servers in the video do not seem to know how to operate it. “I wouldn’t worry too much about this robot sort of going rogue and leaving the restaurant and doing anything. I think it’s just much more of a physical fear here,” Stern said.
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Of course the situation could have become much worse. If the robot ended up knocking over the hot bowls of soup served at this restaurant, it could have caused serious burns and injuries.
The video of the robot elicited sharp reactions on social media, with people finding the incident both funny and alarming. “Go home, robot, you’re drunk,” one person commented. “In a year or two, we will be seeing so many crazy videos like this. Several humanoid companies will begin testing home and consumer-facing business robots soon. So many things will go wrong,” another social media user wrote. “I’ve worked in factories for years, and all machinery must have an e-stop. Why don’t these things just have a big red stop button on their heads in case they go nuts? It wouldn’t have to kill the power, just put it in standby or something,” read another post.