A five-foot, 300-pound security robot knocked over a sixteen-month boy in a California shopping centre, raising questions about its reliability and safety.

A 5-foot tall, 300-pound autonomous Knightscope K5 robot struck the toddler's head, knocking him to the ground, and then ran over his foot. 

The child suffered minor injuries including a scrape on his leg and some swelling.

Knightscope later described the incident as a 'freakish accident' in which the child had started running towards the robot, which veered left to avoid the child, only for the child to ran backwards directly into the machine, at which point it stopped and the child fell to the ground.

The Knightscope K5 robot had started patrolling the Stanford Shopping Center in 2015.