Astonishing moment a ROBOT saves a girl from being crushed: Machine moves forward and raises its arm to stop shelves toppling onto child 'despite NOT being programmed to do that'

 

• Promobot, which is being developed in Russia, is capable of 'learning' for itself
• Video captured it appearing to save a girl climbing on shelves at a university 
• Robot rolls forward and raises its arm to stop the shelves from toppling on her
• But robot's previous antics, including escape attempts, have been branded fake

This is the moment a Russian robot saves a girl from being crushed - despite its makers claiming they did not programme it to do that.

Footage from Perm Polytechnic University, in central Russia, shows Promobot - a 'self-teaching' robot - stopping a set of shelves from falling on a little girl after she tried to climb on them.

Oleg Kivokurtsev, one of the creators of the robot, claims his machine carried out the manoeuvre despite not being programmed to do so.

This is not the first time Promobot has been caught on camera doing seemingly incredible things - such as escaping from its testing site and answering complex questions - but the company has been hit with claims of fakery.

In the latest video, Promobot can be seen sitting in a lobby area of the university on an open day as visitors mill about. 

Then a girl, apparently unaccompanied by an adult, runs over and starts climbing up a set of shelves stacked with boxes.

As she climbs the robot rolls forward, raising an arm which stops the selves from falling over just as they begin toppling.

After looking at the robot for a moment, the girl skips off and the footage ends. 

Oleg Kivokurtsev, manager of robotics company 'Promobot' said: 'We were preparing to the graduation ceremony which should have been opened by our robot.

We planed he would congratulate the graduate students and remind them that future is for robots.'

The robot's owner said the girl's saviour was a 'pure coincidence' as it is equipped with a 'mirror mode' which enables it to emulate human action. 

The mode apparently turned on and caused the robot to raise its arm and approach the girl in the nick of time.

Mr Kivokurtsev added: 'The little girl was playing around and pulled the metal shelve, the robot prevented her from getting hurt. The robot is not programmed that way.'

It is unclear what prompted the mirror mode to switch itself on. The girl was not identified.

In June last year a widely shared video of Promobot, which is designed to be a customer service robot for use in shops and shopping malls, apparently escaping from its testing site.

Its creators claimed they had just finished teaching it to avoid obstacles, before leaving it in a yard next to an open door.

The unintended consequence was that it rolled out of the door and into traffic, before eventually running out of battery.

Then, in August, another video was released showing the robot sitting in a room with its developers as they watched the Rio Olympics, before commenting that the Sochi Winter Olympics were better.

Suddenly the robot springs to live, giving a lengthy and profound answer that spooks the viewers into turning it off.

While nobody has been able to conclusively disprove the claims, prominent tech websites including Atlas Obscura and BGR have both poured cold water on the claims, while others have ignored the robot altogether.

Among the red herrings identified is the fact that the news all appears to be coming from the creators themselves, rather than outside sources.

Inconsistencies in the videos and a sense of the footage being too good to be true all contribute to the air of suspicion, the websites said.