Air travel comes with its usual delays, but this one was different. A Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland was held up for about an hour because of a humanoid robot named Bebop.
According to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle, Bebop is a four foot tall humanoid robot that was booked like a regular passenger because it was too large and heavy to check as luggage. The robot had its own seat, but things quickly got complicated once the crew had to figure out how a robot fits into airline safety rules.
The biggest issue came down to the battery. Like many robots, Bebop runs on a lithium battery, and airlines have strict limits on those. The robot also did not neatly fit into the expectations of where a passenger or carry on item should go, which left the crew sorting out what to do while the plane sat on the tarmac.
Eventually the situation was resolved by moving the robot to a different seat and removing its battery so it met safety requirements. After that, the flight was finally cleared for departure.
The robot wasn’t traveling alone. Bepop was being accompanied by an employee from Elite Event Robotics, a company which rents out humanoid robots for events. Elite Event Robotics posted a video of Bepop dancing and entertaining a crowd before the flight to their instagram.
This might sound like a one off story, but it is a preview of a bigger shift. As robots become a bigger part of society in general, the need to transport them to different states or even countries is going to raise challenges. Airlines are going to have to adapt and set up standard rules over whether robots are allowed to fly like regular passengers.
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