Commercial robot incidents, Q2 2023
Q2 2023: 4 documented incidents involving commercial robots (+300% on the quarter before), 1 with a person hurt and 0 fatal. 0 reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Most involved Boston Dynamics (1). Largest class: consumer (2).
Incidents are counted by the date they happened, 2023-04-01 to 2023-06-30. 0 cases were published to the register during the quarter, including older events documented for the first time. Counts measure what was reported in the press the register reads and cleared verification; fleet sizes are not public, so nothing here is a rate. Rules on the methodology page. Previous quarter for comparison: Q1 2023.
By kind of machine
By company
By outcome
The cases that reached furthest
Ordered by severity, then by how many independent sources the case rests on.
- 2023-04-09A robotic vacuum cleaner docked in its charging station caused a fire in a bungalow in Holland-on-Sea, Essex, resulting in two residents being treated for smoke inhalation and the lounge being severely damaged.Report
- 2023-06-15An unmanned Cruise autonomous vehicle struck a woman's off-leash Labrador in a crosswalk at Clay and Baker streets in San Francisco; the dog was reported uninjured.Report
- 2023-05-12A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Ecovacs Deebot robot vacuums contain a defective motor built from substandard materials that causes the devices to fail prematurely and become wholly inoperable.Report
- 2023-04-18An FDNY Boston Dynamics Spot robodog fell over onto its side while surveying the rubble of a collapsed parking garage in Manhattan, though it later recovered and helped locate the remains of a worker who died in the collapse.Report
Whose incidents reach consequences
Share of a company's recorded incidents, across the whole register, that reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Companies with fewer than the threshold of cases are left out. Register total: 256 cases, 42 escalated.
- Cruise5/8 · 63%
- Zoox4/9 · 44%
- Starship Technologies1/8 · 13%
- Waymo7/73 · 10%
- Tesla1/13 · 8%
- Unitree Robotics0/9 · 0%
What the operators wrote in their own crash reports
1551 crash reports filed with NHTSA by 19 operators under the Standing General Order, read by theme. The federal file has one structured column for what was struck; these counts exist nowhere else.
- Emergency responders on scene, most often Zoox, Inc.144
- Stopped or blocking traffic, most often Waymo LLC140
- A pedestrian involved, most often Waymo LLC65
- A cyclist or scooter rider, most often Waymo LLC46
- Rear-ended by another vehicle, most often Zoox, Inc.42
- Roadworks, cones or a closure, most often Waymo LLC24
All 4 incidents dated Q2 2023
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on. Case metadata is CC BY 4.0; cite the register by its DOI, 10.5281/zenodo.22925531.
- 2023-06-15An unmanned Cruise autonomous vehicle struck a woman's off-leash Labrador in a crosswalk at Clay and Baker streets in San Francisco; the dog was reported uninjured.Report
- 2023-05-12A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Ecovacs Deebot robot vacuums contain a defective motor built from substandard materials that causes the devices to fail prematurely and become wholly inoperable.Report
- 2023-04-18An FDNY Boston Dynamics Spot robodog fell over onto its side while surveying the rubble of a collapsed parking garage in Manhattan, though it later recovered and helped locate the remains of a worker who died in the collapse.Report
- 2023-04-09A robotic vacuum cleaner docked in its charging station caused a fire in a bungalow in Holland-on-Sea, Essex, resulting in two residents being treated for smoke inhalation and the lounge being severely damaged.Report