This may be the story you’ve been waiting for ever since you first heard about robots walking amongst us out here in the real world. According to the techie site Futurism, a robot in California turned on humans somewhat, and no one knew what to do at first.
More specifically, a humanoid robot working in a Haidilao hot pot restaurant in San Jose/Cupertino, Calif., lost control over itself, intimidating and scaring customers, and it had to be restrained by restaurant staffers. The robot had been tasked with performing a Disney-themed dance routine to entertain patrons.
A malfunctioning service robot dances uncontrollably at a Haidilao hotpot restaurant in San Jose, California, knocking over tableware as staff members attempt to restrain it, March 2026. pic.twitter.com/6DFCojpeTS
— Future Adam Curtis B-Roll (@adamcurtisbroll) March 17, 2026
According to reports, no actual humans were injured as a result of the malfunction, but the fact that it happened the way it happened raises a number of questions. If you watch the video, you can see that human staffers on site had no idea how to contain the robot, and once they grabbed hold of its collar and started to restrain it, they didn’t know how to just shut it off or power it down – no big red buttons that said “On” or “Off.”
What’s scary to me isn’t precisely what happened here, but rather, the potential that the next time something like this happens, it doesn’t involve a cute little dancing robot that a waitress can restrain. It’s not hard to imagine a machine that men, or teams of men, can’t restrain or even get close to once it starts to malfunction and create chaos.
Robots are now ubiquitous in warehouses, on factory floors, and even in hospital settings.
As you can see in the video, the robot smashed plates, wrecked tabletops, and sent “chopsticks flying.”
As Futurism noted, the irony of the situation was obvious. The robot wore an orange apron featuring a graphic that read, “I’m good.” This, the news site said, “perfectly add(ed) to the chaotic scene.” The graphic also included an image of Nick Wilde from Disney’s Zootopia.
It took a total of three restaurant staff members to take control of the robot, the whole while trying to duck out of the way of its flailing arms.
Futurism reported that the whole scene was tied to a “promotional event for Disney’s Zootopia 2” that went awry. It’s not clear if the robot was the property of the restaurant, the Disney company, or some other entity.
The news site called Digit.in added that it’s still not clear what caused the scene, and what company manufactured the machine.
A good deal of trust is placed on these machines, the people who make them, the software that runs them, and the people behind the software that runs them. We almost assume nothing will ever go wrong. But when you have machines that can do much more damage, more quickly than a single human can do, and you add a significant level of unpredictability that comes with this sort of innovation, the recipe for and the potential for disaster is immense.
Where I live, if you see a deer-crossing sign, it means that in that spot (at least three times before) a vehicle had to have hit and killed a deer. That’s the crude formula for where to place such signs.
I think of that sort of methodology when I see stories of technology that loses control. What will we have to do, wait until after the fact, where a particular piece of technology kills people, before certain guardrails are installed to prevent future injury or loss of life? I hope not. I hope that the powers that be begin to anticipate what can go wrong and preemptively take steps to prevent unnecessary tragedies that could come at the “hands” of robots.
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