A video of a man can be seen walking through a crowded arena, with a robot following close behind him, went viral on social media. The video claimed that it is The King of Bahrain arriving in Dubai with his heavily-built robot bodyguard.
On August 13, IAS officer Sonmoni Borah tweeted the 30-second video. Borah wrote, “King of Bahrain’s bodyguard robot is going viral on (sic) Social Media!! Technology & AI replacing humans very fast!”
DY365, a regional news channel from Assam, also shared the video on Facebook stating the robot as his bodyguard. Its caption stated, “An undated video of a robot bodyguard belonging to King of Bahrain is going viral on social media.”
A Twitter user Sanjay Bhutiani tweeted the video and wrote, “The Emir of Bahrain arrived in Dubai with his Robot Body Guard”. The video has been viewed over 1 lakh times as of this writing.
Fact-check
A reply to Bhutiani’s tweet, a person said that the King of Bahrain was not in the video which was actually taken during a security exhibition last year. He also pointed out that the UAE national flag can be seen on the robot’s body. A closer look at the video shows the flag can indeed be seen on the arm and shoulder of the robot.
An article in the Khaleej Times on February 19, 2019, stated that an 8-foot robot named Titan greeted visitors at the UAE International Security Exhibition in Abu Dhabi. According to that report, “Visitors of the ongoing International Defence Exhibition (Idex) in the Capital are amused by the robot greeter, Titan, that comes out after every hour to greet them and welcome them to the region’s largest defence exhibition.
Wearing a military vest, the robot Titan, walks through the crowds as he introduces himself in both Arabic and English. Wearing a military vest, the robot Titan, walks through the crowds as he introduces himself in both Arabic and English.
Titan, a famous walkaround robot, is 8ft tall and weighs 60 kg. He is the world’s first commercial entertainment robot artist and was developed by the British company Cyberstein.
A three-minute video was on YouTube, which is the full version of the viral clip shared. The video was uploaded by a channel called ‘DUBAI7’ on February 24, 2019. The national flag of the UAE can be seen on the robot’s hands and shoulders in the video.
Therefore, this video claimed to be of a bodyguard robot of the King of Bahrain is factually incorrect. It is, in fact, from the February 2019 International Security Exhibition held in the UAE.