Probably the most unusual police intervention that March took place in Macau, a former Portuguese colony in southern China, sometime around 9 p.m. on Thursday, March 6, 2026. A 70-year-old woman was walking down a street near an apartment complex in the Patane district, looking at her phone as she walked, when she suddenly saw a humanoid robot behind her. The robot was a Unitree G1, a model increasingly seen in public places in China and popular for promotions and social media.
The woman began berating the robot as a small crowd of passers-by looked on, complaining that the bot had “scared” her. Seeing this, the robot raised both hands, perhaps in apology, perhaps in confusion. That gesture, notes Futurism, probably didn’t help the situation much. After the officers arrived, the woman told them she was sick and asked to be taken to the hospital. She was examined and released, stating that she would not file a report, and the police confirmed that there was no physical contact or injury.
The epilogue was the kind that the journalists probably couldn’t wait for: the video shows two policemen escorting the criminal robot to the operator, with one of them putting his hand on the robot’s shoulder. The robot was returned to its operator, a 50-year-old man, who was warned to be more careful when using the robot in public spaces.
A representative of the education center that owns the robot explained that the incident was a misunderstanding: the woman stopped in the middle of the footpath to look at her phone, the robot was unable to get around her and simply waited behind her with its lights on.
Users all over the internet were amused by this story, and especially by the absurd scene of the policemen executing the tiny android, joking that the robot was “arrested”. Part of the comments turned into a more serious discussion about the ethics and safety of robots working in public spaces alongside people. The Unitree G1 is a particularly closely watched model precisely because it is increasingly appearing in urban areas of China without much of a regulatory framework defining how and when these robots may be deployed.
The incident is harmless in its consequences, but it raises questions that won’t be harmless for a long time: who is responsible when a robot scares, injures or otherwise disturbs a passerby, and how is it regulated before humanoid robots become a common part of the street scene, reports Futurism.