A stock photo of a chess-playing robot in Shanghai — unconnected to this incident. | Photo by Gao Yuwen/VCG via Getty Images
A chess robot broke the finger of a seven-year-old boy playing in a tournament in Russia, according to reports from local news outlets (seen via The Guardian).
The incident happened last week at the Moscow Chess Open, where the robot was hired to play competitors. Video of the incident (below) shows the machine is a standard industrial robot arm customized to move pieces on three chess boards simultaneously.
“The robot broke the child’s finger. This, of course, is bad,” Sergey Lazarev, President of the Moscow Chess Federation, told Russian news agency TASS (translation via Google Translate).
Said Lazarev: “The robot was rented by us, it has been exhibited in many places, for a long time, with specialists. Apparently, the operators…
