The threat of robot guards is not enough to stop people stealing

Would you do what a robot told you to do? If people stealing food right under the eyes of a bot is anything to go by, RoboCop is still a long way off. In a twist on a common psychology experiment, in which a picture of a pair of eyes seems to make people behave more honestly, Guy Hoffman at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues stationed a robot guard to watch over a table of snack food labelled with a "reserved" sign in a student common room. The team used a mObi robot made by US robotics company Bossa Nova. This does not have a threatening appearance, like some security bots -- such as the Knightscope (pictured) -- but it has eyes that looked around the room.