Police in Germany have seized a robot after it groped a 16-year-old girl and made thrusting movements at her on a night out.
Videos posted to social media show two young men steering the machine – dressed in a white tank top, black bottoms and wearing a gold chain and sunglasses with a fake moustache – towards a group of women.
One repeatedly shouts at the four-foot robot and pulls it backward after it makes sexual gestures, while people in the lively Cologne street laugh.
Two teenagers – the 16-year-old owner and a 19-year-old friend – were arrested amid suspicions they were controlling the robot’s movements at the time.
Their phones were also seized after the attack, which was said to have been streamed online.
Cologne police spokesman Christoph Bermel said the crime was ‘new territory for us’.
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‘We have not been aware of this phenomenon so far,’ he told The Associated Press.
Emergency teams that were dispatched to the scene near a fast-food restaurant found the robot in the trunk of a vehicle, Cologne police said in a statement on Monday.
The robot and the two young men’s mobile phones were confiscated.
North Rhine Westphalia Police Cologne, on Facebook, posted an image of the red-and-gold robot lying on the ground.
On the police’s Facebook account on Tuesday, officers criticised inappropriate comments and warned that sharing or joking about such incidents can worsen the impact on any victim.
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