A robot broke a 7-year-old human opponent’s finger in a chess match. VIDEO

A robot playing chess in the Moscow Open competition with several human opponents at once broke the finger of one of the competitors during the match. The victim was a seven-year-old child who, in the fever of the match, rushed to move a piece from the board just after the robot made a move. Because the robot couldn’t tell the difference between the child’s hand and the game pieces, it caught the child’s finger in the mechanical arm and held it for a few seconds, long enough to break the finger.

Robot not blamed for incident

The incident took place on July 19, and the video that went viral was first published on the Base Telegram channel. The video is recorded using the contest’s surveillance cameras, where it is quite clear how the robot grabs the child’s finger and doesn’t let go. However, it seems that the attack is not considered “malicious”. Representatives of the Russian Chess Federation say the victim did not follow the required safety rules:

“There are certain safety rules, and the child apparently broke them. When he made the move, he didn’t realize that he had to wait first. This is a very rare case and the first one I can remember.”, says Sergey Smagin, the Federation’s vice-president.

“The child made a move and then had to give the robot time to respond, but the boy rushed, and the robot caught him.”,said Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation. “People jumped to the young player’s aid and pulled his finger, but the fracture could not be avoided. The child played again the next day, finished the tournament and the volunteers helped register the moves.”, Lazarev added.

Also Lazarev says the robot is perfectly safe and this event was a “coincidence”. But the child’s parents have filed a complaint.

The boy who was injured by the robot, Cristopher, is considered one of the top 30 chess players in Russia in his category, under 9.