Kiwi delivery robot bursts in flames after ‘human error’ on Berkeley campus

Manufacturer says problem was caused by a faulty battery

A delivery robot has burst into flames on University of California at Berkeley’s campus after delivering an order.

Kiwibot, a robot designed for food delivery and courier services, has been tested on the college campus for about two years without any such issues.

The pint-sized drone’s battery ignited “some smoke and minor flames” and prompted a passerby to extinguish the fire before the local fire department arrived at the scene.

The startup confirmed the fiery incident in a blog post, saying it was caused by a ‘human error.’

“We learned that the root cause was human error when replacing the batteries, where a defective battery was put in place of a functioning one,” the company wrote in the post. “This caused an exceedingly rare occurrence of the battery experiencing thermal runaway.”

Kiwi reassured customers that it is working with the local authorities to investigate the fire incident, and claim that challenges have only “impacted less than 0.6 p of our robot fleet.”

It said that it has pulled all robots out-of-service while an investigation is in process.

To prevent another unfortunate incident, Kiwi said it will be adding a “new battery review process” to help avoid further robot explosions.

The company's robots are said to have delivered more than 10,000 meals.