Kiwibot delivery robot catches fire on UC Berkeley campus
A Kiwibot food delivery robot caught fire on the UC Berkeley campus. No one was hurt. Kiwi blamed a defective battery installed by mistake and briefly pulled its fleet.
Key facts
- A Kiwibot food delivery robot caught fire on the University of California, Berkeley campus on Friday, December 14, 2018.
- No injuries were reported and the fire was put out quickly.
- Kiwi attributed the fire to human error, saying a defective battery had been installed in place of a working one and went into thermal runaway.
- Kiwi pulled its whole fleet from the field after the fire and delivered outstanding orders by hand.
- More than 100 Kiwibots were operating in Berkeley at the time, according to MIT Technology Review.
What happened
On Friday, December 14, 2018, one of Kiwi’s small delivery robots caught fire on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Students photographed and filmed the burning robot, and the images circulated widely. The fire was extinguished quickly and nobody was injured.
In the days that followed, students set up a candlelight memorial for the robot, which drew additional attention to the event.
The system involved
The Kiwibot is a cooler-sized sidewalk robot that carried restaurant orders to customers around the Berkeley campus and nearby streets. News reports described it as an autonomous delivery robot; MIT Technology Review reported that more than 100 were in service in Berkeley at the time.
Investigation and response
Kiwi took all of its robots out of service after the fire and delivered pending orders by hand. The following day it published a statement saying the cause was human error: a staff member had replaced a functioning battery with a defective one, and that battery overheated in a thermal runaway.
The company said it had put software in place to track the state of every battery so that a faulty one would be caught before use. No regulator was reported to have investigated.
What is not established
The cause is Kiwi’s own explanation and was not independently examined. The sources reviewed did not say how long the fleet stayed out of service.
Outcomes
- Kiwi withdrew all of its robots from service after the fire and completed pending orders by hand.
- Kiwi said it added software to monitor the condition of each robot's battery.
Sources
- A Delivery Robot Burst Into Flames in CaliforniaFuturism, December 17, 2018
- A food delivery robot burst into flames—and now people have made a candlelight vigil for itMIT Technology Review, December 17, 2018