Overview
- Video posted by Volga Store and widely shared on social media on September 1 shows a customer push Syoma, the humanoid on display, after which the robot advances and lifts a leg in a motion that looks like a kick.
- Store employees intervened on camera to hold the robot and power it down, and the store says no one was injured and the device was sent for review or a restart.
- Reporters and experts stress the footage alone cannot establish cause because verifying origin requires access to the robot’s control logs, software state or remote-control interfaces.
- Observers have proposed competing explanations — technical failure, automatic balance response, remote human control, staged publicity or AI-manipulated video — but none of these hypotheses has been proven publicly.
- The episode highlights practical safety and operational questions for humanoid robots used in public retail spaces, including protocols for physical contact, emergency shutdown and transparent technical reviews.