By Tim Binnall
A wild video from China shows the moment when a woman becomes fed up with a human-sized robot 'helper' and proceeds to angrily smash the machine with a stick. The bizarre incident reportedly occurred at a hospital in the city of Xuzhou and was captured by an astounded observer who subsequently shared their footage of the showdown on Chinese social media over the weekend. In the video, the rage-filled woman can be seen striding up to the robot with a large stick and walloping it in the head. She then 'trash talks' the automaton before waylaying it with several more blows that send pieces of the machine flying across the floor.
While it is uncertain what led to the violent outburst, one online viewer in China noted that, due to a shortage of nurses in the country, many hospitals have begun to rely on robots to schedule appointments and tend to patients, many of whom understandably "find it a frustrating process." As one might imagine, the jaw-dropping video quickly went viral on social media with many sympathizing with the woman and celebrating her destruction of the machine. For their part, the hospital asserted that mental illness was to blame for the incident, which sounds like a dubious diagnosis to anyone who has ever found themselves in a similar position and would like nothing more than to smash an uncooperative robot with a stick.