L-Re · Incidental Research

Not a Roomba-Fire Story

# Not a Roomba-Fire Story

*Robotic Mowers, Marketplace Litter Boxes, and Cloud-Killed Companions as the Decade’s Consumer Kinematic Harm*

**Prepared as a consumer product-assurance analysis**  
Current as of August 19, 2026

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> **Research premise.** The decade’s consumer kinematic harm is not a Roomba-fire story. It is robotic mowers versus crawling children in German-speaking Europe, a cheap Amazon litter box that produced the first US pet-fatality opinion, and companion robots that stop being robots when the cloud dies. Home humanoids have no injury or regulatory first in this window.

## Abstract

**Research premise.** Between August 2016 and August 2026, public conversation about machines that Sense, Move, and Act in homes and yards repeatedly defaulted to a lithium-fire narrative built around indoor robot vacuums. The official and judicial record of consumer kinematic harm does not support that default. The only consumer class with a repeating, hospital-attested pattern of severe pediatric injury is the robotic lawn mower, whose obstruction sensors still treat a crawling infant as a lawn irregularity; the dedicated European product standard is in a fourth draft amendment because the 2015 rules, twice amended, have not closed that gap. The first published US federal opinion on a consumer self-cleaning litter box that killed a pet treats “safe” and “unsupervised” as falsifiable advertising claims rather than puffery, even while New York law treats the animal as property. The dominant legal risk of social and companion robots in the same window was economic—prepaid vaporware and cloud-tethered bricking—not crush or laceration. No court has held a maker liable for killing a cloud-tethered robot. This paper reconstructs those three records as one product-assurance argument. The method is source-primary analysis, distinguished as fact, inference, judgment, or unknown. The finding is that a home humanoid will inherit the mower sensor-gap problem and the companion-robot cloud-tether problem before it inherits a published home-humanoid safety standard. None exists as of cutoff. Official thermal recalls of pool robots and mower docks, including later actions in the recall lane, are a sibling question and are excluded except as a one-line pointer.

_Keywords: consumer kinematics, robotic lawn mowers, EN 50636-2-107, obstruction sensors, self-cleaning litter boxes, false advertising, companion robots, cloud tethering, product assurance, Product Security Passport_

## 1. Introduction: The Apparent Puzzle

A reader who spent the last decade following consumer robotics in English-language technology press can reasonably conclude that the physical-harm story of the category is fire. Indoor robot vacuums are the installed base people see. Lithium packs are the component people already fear. A handful of dock warnings and a large aftermarket-battery folklore have been enough to keep the Roomba-fire sentence in circulation. The puzzle is that the official and judicial record of consumer kinematic harm, read as a decade rather than as a news cycle, does not support that sentence.

What the record does support is narrower and more architectural. A robotic mower is a cutting means on a moving chassis whose Sense function is built to ignore small, low, irregular objects. A self-cleaning litter box is a kinematic enclosure that cycles around a living animal on the strength of an in-bowl presence claim. A companion robot is a personality that lives in someone else’s cloud and can be extinguished by an invoice, a missed funding round, or a server cutoff. Those three objects share a Control Fabric problem: the function the buyer was sold—child-safe mowing, unsupervised scooping, an always-on friend—is not a property of the plastic. It is a property of a sensor suite, a firmware claim, or a remote service that can fail without the chassis looking any different.

LrrK’s judgment is that this is the consumer-lane story of the decade, and that treating it as a Roomba-fire story is how an assurance reader misses the actual firsts. Official US thermal actions in the window concentrate on pool robots and outdoor docks, not indoor robot vacuums; a sibling paper covers that recall lane, including later official actions such as Honda Miimo, Zodiac, and Canadian floor-robot files. This paper does not reopen it. Merger politics, camera-annotator leaks, and home-humanoid pre-order marketing are likewise sibling questions. The argument here is product assurance. The unit of analysis is the kinematic object as sold and as it failed.

The method is public-source reconstruction. Injury and death counts appear only when a named source states them. Viral claims without a primary are dropped, not softened. “Not established” is not treated as safe. Where brand, model, or installed base is unpublished, the paper says so.

## 2. What the Public Record Actually Shows

Three classes of first occupy the decade’s consumer kinematic harm file.

The first is pediatric blade contact. On 21 June 2018 in Pertisau, Tirol, police said a 14-month-old crawled from a terrace onto a lawn and was run over by a robotic mower; the child was transferred from Schwaz to Innsbruck. *Heute* later reported severe injuries to the left hand and foot. Brand was not named. Contemporaneous police and APA copy does not state amputation.1 On the weekend of 4–5 May 2024 in Klagenfurt, an 11-month-old crawling in a garden was struck by a robotic mower and suffered a massive foot injury. ORF and *Die Presse* reported a two-hour interdisciplinary surgery and that further operations would be required. Brand was again not named. Amputation is not stated for this specific child.2 Klinikum Klagenfurt paediatric surgery chief Johannes Schalamon told ORF on 7 May 2024 that the department treats two to three small children per year with the most severe injuries after robotic-mower accidents, “zum Teil mit Amputation”—in some cases with amputation. The mechanism, as he described it, is not a clean cut. Small obstacles are driven over; tissue is abraded and minced.3 The OECD AI Incidents Monitor logged the 2024 case as an AI incident, which is a classification choice, not a clinical finding.4 No named autonomous robotic-mower fatality was found in the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia in the window. Ride-on and walk-behind child deaths are a different product class and are not used here.

The second first is a pet-fatality opinion. Stephanie Gomez and Frank Gueits allege that their rescue cat Sarabi was found dead on 27 January 2025, partially inside a PetPivot Autoscooper 11 sold on Amazon for about $200 as a Christmas gift. The complaint describes a motor still running, a dislodged waste bin, and a crushed torso. The case was filed in Bronx Supreme Court around 9 June 2025 and removed to the Southern District of New York as *Gome[z] et al. v. Petpivot, Inc. et al.*, 1:25-cv-05622, before Judge Lewis J. Liman.5 On 24 February 2026 the court dismissed the individual defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction and dismissed negligent infliction of emotional distress and companionship damages, because New York treats pets as property. It allowed New York General Business Law §§ 349–350 false-advertising claims to proceed, holding that “safe” and “unsupervised” were falsifiable, not puffery.6 The case was open as of cutoff. One named cat death is the count. No human injury is alleged. This is not Whisker, and it is not Litter-Robot.

The third first is a pair of companion-robot deaths that did not happen on the floor. After Anki’s 2019 collapse, Digital Dream Labs marketed Vector 2.0, Cozmo 2.0, and Butter Robot as prepaid successors. The Pennsylvania Attorney General alleged, in September 2024, about 14,000 prepaid orders between November 2020 and January 2024, most unfulfilled, payments of $147 to $655, combined sales greater than $4 million, and violations of the FTC Mail Order Rule and Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. The AG sought injunction, restitution, and $1,000 to $3,000 per violation. No judgment, settlement, or consent decree was on the public record as of cutoff.7 Separately, Embodied notified Moxie owners around 10 December 2024 that the $799–$800 children’s companion would lose core functionality within days because it could not operate without the cloud, and that refunds would not be offered except as a non-guarantee for 30-day buyers. Fourteen days earlier, FTC staff had published a survey finding that nearly 89 percent of 184 smart products failed to disclose software-support duration, and that such omissions may violate the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and FTC Act §5. No FTC case, class action, or ruling on Moxie was found.8

These three records are not a highlight reel. They are one pattern. In each case the buyer was sold a kinematic function—unsupervised mowing, unsupervised scooping, an always-on companion—and the function failed at Sense, at the advertising claim that Sense was adequate, or at the remote Control Fabric that *was* the robot. LrrK’s inference, at high confidence on the named incidents and at moderate confidence on how widely they represent the installed base, is that the decade’s consumer kinematic harm is a trust failure of that function, not a thermal failure of indoor vacuums.

## 3. A Crawling Child Is Below the Obstacle Profile

A robotic lawn mower is designed to treat the lawn as a field of small irregularities. Leaves, pine cones, toys, hose loops, and the crowns of uneven turf are objects the machine is supposed to drive over or around without stopping every few metres. The product promise is unattended cutting. The Sense function that makes the promise possible is therefore a filter: it must ignore objects below a certain height, stiffness, and contrast, or the mower will not finish the yard.

A crawling infant is below that filter. In Pertisau the child left a terrace while a parent’s back was turned; in Klagenfurt the child was already in the garden. Both were in the machine’s travel path at a height the chassis is built to treat as ground. Schalamon’s clinical description is the physical consequence of that design choice. The cutting means does not encounter a standing obstacle and stop. It encounters a low, soft body, drives over it, and abrades tissue that then cannot be used for reconstruction.9 That is Act without a successful Sense event. Move continues because the Control Fabric never received a reason to stop.

This is why brand opacity in the press is not a colour detail. Without a named model, Watch cannot map sensor generation to outcome. A bumper, a lift switch, a magnetic boundary, a camera, and a claimed “child detection” firmware package are different Sense objects. Kestrel would treat a child-detection claim as a firmware assertion that has to be tested against a prone, crawling, or recumbent target, not against a standing adult shin. Lab would need a ground-truth method that uses that target. None of those mappings can be made from the 2018 or 2024 Austrian copy. The injury is a fact. The control-fabric identity is unknown.

National statistics that do not separately code robotic mowers from walk-behind and ride-on machines will under-count the class. Schalamon’s “two to three a year, some amputations” is one centre, not a census. LrrK’s assessment, at high confidence on the two named incidents and on the existence of a dedicated product standard, and at moderate confidence on the single-centre rate, is that the injury pattern is real, repeating, and incompletely visible in official tallies. An out-of-window Swiss television case from May 2014—the Robomow MC500 toe amputation of a two-year-old—sits in the cultural memory of German-speaking Europe and is not counted as a window fact. It is mentioned only to mark that the clinical community was already describing the same mechanism before this decade opened.

The US analogue does not close the gap by existing. ANSI/OPEI 60335-2-107-2019, approved 5 September 2019, is the first American national standard for robotic battery-powered electrical lawnmowers, a national adoption with modifications of IEC 60335-2-107. OPEI announced it as a market-enabling instrument: manufacturers would now be able to design to a published rule.10 A published rule is not a demonstration that obstruction sensors detect crawling children. A Passport that records “conforms to 60335-2-107” without recording the test target, the travel-direction coverage, and the stop-timing evidence has recorded a standard citation, not a Sense result.

## 4. Why the Dedicated Standard Is Still Being Rewritten

EN 50636-2-107:2015 specifies safety requirements for robotic battery-powered electrical rotary lawnmowers and their peripherals with a rated battery voltage of not more than 75 V d.c. It has been amended. A2:2020 and A3:2021 are published. Draft EN 50636-2-107:2015/FprA4:2026 is not. A CENELEC catalogue entry current in 2026 lists the draft as unpublished, at the stage of dispatch of the formal-vote text to the CENELEC Management Centre, with a January 2026 stage date.11 The existence of a fourth amendment, still unfinished a decade after the base standard, is itself evidence. Standards committees do not keep rewriting a subclause because the product class is boring.

The draft’s construction clause, visible in the 2023 enquiry text that the 2026 formal-vote draft continues, replaces the obstruction-sensor requirement. In automatic mode the sensor or sensors must be active and capable of performing the intended function in all operating positions and in all directions of travel, with narrow exceptions for short reversing or edge manoeuvres. Traction is to stop within a time derived from the distance to the cutting-means tip circle and the travel speed. If the sensor does not deactivate within three seconds of initial activation, the cutting means must stop. If the machine remains in contact or in detection of an object for ten seconds, traction is to be deactivated, with a specified restart. Force on impact is capped. An additional non-contact sensor, if relied on to reduce speed, may be tested against a rigid non-metallic cylinder 70 millimetres in diameter and 400 millimetres high, standing on end, colour-matched to the background and normalised to ambient temperature. A non-contact sensor that is itself to fulfil the obstruction-sensor requirement may be tested against a smaller cylinder, 25 millimetres by 145 to 150 millimetres, under the same colour and temperature conditions.12

Those test objects are standing cylinders. A crawling 11-month-old is not a standing cylinder of 400 millimetres, and is only debatably represented by a 150-millimetre peg. LrrK’s inference, at moderate confidence because the formal-vote text was not independently retrieved in full, is that FprA4 exists because the 2015, 2020, and 2021 sensor rules still fail on prone or crawling children. The draft is a recognition of a Sense gap, not a demonstration that the gap is closed. Adoption, the final test method, and whether a brand-named pediatric case appears after the amendment are Watch items. They are not established.

The horizontal net around the product standard is newer than the injuries. Regulation (EU) 2023/988, the General Product Safety Regulation, applies from 13 December 2024. It is a safety net for risks not covered by sectoral harmonisation law, and it expressly asks assessors to consider digitally connected products, the specific risks to children, and the possibility that software will change a product after it is placed on the market.13 GPSR does not write a crawling-child test. It does make it harder to treat an unattended cutting means as a finished consumer product whose residual risk is only a warning sticker. A Campaign that asks only whether a mower bears a CE mark has asked the wrong question. The question is whether Sense was validated against the body that actually enters the yard.

Until a regulator or hospital series publishes brand and model beside outcome, Passport cannot map sensor generation to injury. That mapping is the next control that would change the picture. In its absence, “not established” remains the honest label for any particular SKU, and it is not a finding of safety.

## 5. A Cheap Enclosure and a Falsifiable Safety Claim

The PetPivot Autoscooper 11 is a kinematic enclosure that was sold as remaining partially open, equipped with sensors that stop when a cat is inside, and operable without supervision. Those three claims are the Control Fabric as advertised. The complaint alleges that on 27 January 2025 they were all false at once: the waste path came apart, the motor kept running, and the animal was crushed.14

Judge Liman’s 24 February 2026 opinion does not decide liability. It decides what kind of sentence “safe” is. Advertising law often treats general safety talk as puffery—too vague to be proven false. The court declined that reading. Safety, in this configuration, was a specific operational representation: the device would stop for a cat, would not fully enclose, and could be left alone. New York General Business Law §§ 349 and 350 require causation, not justifiable reliance. The plaintiffs alleged that they relied on the representations when they accepted and used a Christmas gift, not when they paid for it. The court held that a connection between the representation and the harm from the product’s failure was enough to survive a motion to dismiss.15 That is a fact of the opinion. It is not a finding that the sensors failed, that the design was defective, or that Amazon is liable. Those questions remain open.

The damages holding is the other half of the architecture. New York treats pets as personal property. Emotional-distress and loss-of-companionship damages were struck. A bystander NIED theory was rejected because the plaintiffs were not in the statutory “immediate family” relation to the cat as New York has defined that class, and because the surviving owner’s exposure “did not go beyond witnessing the mechanical movement of the machine and unplugging it from the wall.”16 The legal object that remains is therefore not companionship. It is a falsifiable unsupervised-safe claim attached to a kinematic product sold through a marketplace. Amazon remains a named seller-defendant. The marketplace is part of the trust path.

CEO Poppy Xie told the *New York Post* that the death was “the only fatal or serious safety incident” among “more than 100,000 units.” That is a company statement, not a finding.17 Unit volume and uniqueness are untested. The unpublished sensor design is unknown. LrrK’s assessment, at high confidence on the docket and the holdings and at moderate confidence on the “first published US federal opinion” ranking, is that cheap Amazon-channel kinematics will keep producing the first cases because they combine unsupervised marketing with thin Sense suites. Inference, not fact: the next enclosure that cycles around a living body will be litigated first as advertising, because advertising is what a federal court has now said it can reach.

This is not a Whisker story and should not be merged with one. A separate reported Amazon listing involving a different brand and a different cat was not located as a lawsuit and is not used. A CPSC or Health Canada file, or a trial finding on the sensor design, would move the case from advertising law into product-safety regulation. Watch the open docket. Watch whether Amazon stays in it. A Passport for a marketplace kinematic enclosure would have to record the seller, the in-bowl presence method, the waste-path interlock, the unsupervised-use claim, and the support duration—not only the SKU name.

## 6. The Robot That Dies on the Invoice

Anki sold more than 1.5 million Cozmo, Vector, and Overdrive units before it shut down at the end of April 2019, with operations ending around 1 May. IEEE Spectrum and the Associated Press recorded the collapse as a late-stage funding failure, not as a safety event.18 Digital Dream Labs inherited the beloved kinematic objects and sold the next generation as a prepaid future: Vector 2.0, Cozmo 2.0, Butter Robot. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s September 2024 complaint in Allegheny County, GD-24-010283, alleges that most of about 14,000 prepaid orders placed between November 2020 and January 2024 were never fulfilled, that advertised ship dates were fictitious, that consumers were not told they could cancel, and that refunds were not issued. The theories are the FTC Mail Order Rule, 16 C.F.R. § 435.2, and Pennsylvania’s UTPCPL. The remedies sought include a ban on taking prepayment in Pennsylvania.19

No human injury is alleged. No animal injury is alleged. The harm is money, time, and a promised robot that never arrived. LrrK’s assessment, at high confidence on the allegations as filed and on the absence of a judgment, is that this is the largest companion-robot consumer-protection action in the window. Recovery is an inference at moderate confidence and is likely to be asset-poor. Whether remaining Vectors stay alive is unknown.

A community docket reader reported that on 9 July 2026 Judge Daniel D. Regan appointed a receiver over Digital Dream Labs digital assets in a separate Allegheny County matter, GD-25-013191, and that the receiver took control of repositories, hosting, domains, billing, and customer data. The order PDF was not independently retrieved for this paper. The report is useful context and is not treated as a primary holding.20 What can be said as fact is narrower: the AG case was still unresolved as of cutoff, and the installed base of earlier Vectors sits on infrastructure whose legal custody is now contested in the same county.

The trust failure is fulfillment. Campaign should treat a prepaid companion SKU as a trust instrument, not as a toy preorder. Passport should record the promised ship window, the Mail Order Rule disclosures, the identity of the successor that inherited the chassis, and the location of the cloud that makes the chassis a robot. Control Fabric, in this case, is an invoice and a server account. When either dies, Move and Act were never the problem. The object never arrived, or arrived as a body whose personality someone else still owns.

## 7. The Robot That Dies When the Cloud Dies

Moxie was sold as a safe, engaging companion for children aged five to ten. Embodied’s own closing FAQ stated the architectural fact without ornament: Moxie cannot perform core functionality without cloud connectivity; services would likely cease within days; warranties, the parent app, and support would end; refunds would not be offered, except as a non-guarantee for purchases inside thirty days if assets were sold.21 Ars Technica recorded the notice in December 2024 and noted that a lead investor had withdrawn. The company later explored an OpenMoxie local-server path and an over-the-air update that had to be installed before the cloud went dark. That sequel does not change the original event. A child-facing kinematic object whose personality is a server became, on the company’s own description, inert plastic in a bedroom.22

Fourteen days earlier, on 26 November 2024, FTC staff published the software-support survey. Staff reviewed manufacturer product pages for 184 connected devices and found that nearly 89 percent failed to disclose support duration or end date. A subsequent web search still failed to find that information for two-thirds of the set. The staff paper is not an enforcement action. It is a theory: failure to disclose how long a warranted smart product will receive the software that makes it the product may violate Magnuson-Moss and, if the manufacturer has represented how long the product will be usable, FTC Act §5. The appendix’s device categories include robot lawn mowers, robot vacuums, and robot mops. Staff treated those machines as software-tethered consumer products, not as blade-contact or crush problems.23

No court has applied that theory to Moxie. No court has held that a maker may not brick a cloud-tethered robot. Jibo’s servers died on 4 March 2019 after the company’s intellectual property was sold to SQN Venture Partners; the robot told owners its functions would be limited and danced. No lawsuit was found.24 Amazon’s Astro for Business, launched in November 2023 at $2,349.99, was discontinued with a cease-function date of 25 September 2024. Amazon automatically refunded the hardware, refunded unused prepaid subscription fees, and added a $300 credit. The home Astro was not the 2024 brick.25 The Astro package is the remediation baseline a later plaintiff will quote. It is also the proof that bricking is a choice about money, not a law of robotics.

LrrK’s inference, at moderate confidence, is that the FTC staff paper plus Moxie’s timing tees up the first “you must disclose how long the robot will live” case, and that staff paper is not that case. Published unit counts of bricked Moxies were not found. Sony’s 2014 Aibo support cutoff is outside the window. The physical risk of these objects is low. The Magnuson-Moss and §5 risk is the precedent. Control Fabric and Campaign coincide: the cloud *is* the robot. A Passport silent on support duration, data deletion, and whether core Act functions can run locally has recorded a toy, not a kinematic system.

## 8. What a Home Humanoid Will Inherit

Home humanoids have no injury or regulatory first in this window. Figure, 1X Neo, and Optimus had no published consumer-injury case, no dedicated CPSC humanoid rule, and no adopted home-humanoid safety standard as of cutoff. ISO 13482:2014 addresses personal-care robots; a second-edition final draft was under development and is not treated here as a published, testable home-humanoid regime. Public-demo contacts and dual-use quadruped adaptations are Watch items in other lanes. They are not home-deployment injury records.26

The inheritance is still visible. A humanoid that walks through a house will meet the mower problem first: Sense must distinguish a recumbent child, a pet, a dropped object, and a floor irregularity, and must do so while Move and Act remain live. It will meet the Moxie problem second: if gait, speech, or “personality” are cloud services, the object stops being a robot when the company dies, and the FTC’s 2024 theory is already written. It will meet the PetPivot problem if any enclosure, gripper, or seated assist is marketed as unsupervised-safe. LrrK’s inference, at moderate confidence, is that the first home-humanoid harm file will be assembled from those three inherited gaps rather than from a new standard written for the form factor.

“Not established” is the honest label for home-humanoid injury, and it is not a finding that the class is safe. A Campaign that waits for a humanoid-specific CPSC page before it records mower-grade Sense evidence and companion-grade support-duration evidence will arrive after the first case.

## 9. What a Consumer-Lane Passport Would Have to Record

A Product Security Passport is point-in-time and device-specific. It is not certification, not a warranty, and not a guarantee of safety. What it can do is refuse to let a marketing sentence stand in for a Sense result, a fulfillment record, or a support-duration disclosure.

For a robotic mower, the Passport would identify the chassis, the cutting means, the obstruction-sensor suite, the firmware version that implements stop timing, the test target used, the travel directions in which the sensor is active, and whether a child-detection claim was made. Kestrel would correlate that claim across images. Lab would run the prone and crawling cases the standing-cylinder test does not represent. Watch would hold FprA4 adoption and the first brand-named pediatric file. Kinematic Assurance Topology would run from bumper or camera through the traction cut to the blade, and would treat a failed Sense event as ownership of Act by the machine.

For a kinematic enclosure sold on a marketplace, the Passport would record the seller as a trust path, the in-bowl or in-chamber presence method, the waste-path interlock, the unsupervised-use language, and the open docket if there is one. *Gomez* has already said that language is litigable. Control Fabric is the presence claim. Sense is the only thing that keeps Move from becoming crush.

For a companion or social robot, the Passport would record whether core functions run locally, how long software support is promised, where personality data are processed, what happens to the object on insolvency, and whether a prepaid SKU was sold against a ship date. Campaign would treat the cloud identity as the product. The Mail Order Rule and Magnuson-Moss are already the legal names for those fields. Astro for Business is the remediation comparison. Moxie is the exhibit without a case.

A Passport that records only “CE marked,” “sold by Amazon,” or “AI companion” has recorded a category. The decade’s harm file is about the function that failed.

## 10. Conclusion

The decade’s consumer kinematic harm is not a Roomba-fire story. It is a Sense failure on a child-shaped obstacle, a falsifiable unsupervised-safe claim on a cheap enclosure, and a Control Fabric that lives in a server the buyer does not own. Robotic mowers are the only consumer class with a repeating, hospital-attested pattern of severe pediatric injury and a dedicated product standard still being rewritten. The first US pet-fatality opinion on a self-cleaning litter box reached advertising law because that is the instrument a federal court could hold. Companion robots died on the invoice and in the cloud; no court has yet said a maker may not brick them.

Home humanoids have no first in this window. They will inherit the gaps anyway. The durable consumer-assurance task is to record the function—obstruction timing, presence sensing, support duration, fulfillment, local Act—rather than the category name. Until a brand-named mower series, a PetPivot trial finding, or an FTC or state-AG complaint that applies the November 2024 theory to a bricked companion is on the public record, those fields remain Watch items. “Not established” is not safe. It is the reason the next paper in this lane will have to be written.

Endnotes

1. MeinBezirk, “Rasenmähroboter überrollte Kind,” 21 June 2018. https://www.meinbezirk.at/schwaz/c-lokales/rasenmaehroboter-ueberrollte-kind_a2709230; Salzburger Nachrichten, “Einjähriger in Tirol von Rasenmähroboter überrollt,” 21 June 2018. https://www.sn.at/panorama/oesterreich/einjaehriger-in-tirol-von-rasenmaehroboter-ueberrollt-art-257704; Heute, “Einjähriger Bub von Rasenmähroboter überrollt,” June 2018. https://www.heute.at/s/pertisau-tirol-einjahriger-bub-von-rasenmahroboter-uberrollt-schwerer-unfall-56162850

2. ORF Kärnten, “Mähroboter-Unfall: ‚Gewebe wird zerhäckselt‘,” 7 May 2024. https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3256029/; Die Presse, “Elfmonatiger Bub in Kärnten von Rasenmäher-Roboter schwer verletzt,” May 2024. https://www.diepresse.com/18441789/elfmonatiger-bub-in-kaernten-von-rasenmaeher-roboter-schwer-verletzt

3. ORF Kärnten, 7 May 2024, quoting Johannes Schalamon on annual caseload, amputation as a class of outcome, and the minced-tissue mechanism. https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3256029/

4. OECD.AI, “Lawnmower Robot Severely Injures 11-Month-Old Child in Austria,” incident 2024-05-07-d0d2. https://oecd.ai/en/incidents/2024-05-07-d0d2

5. PacerMonitor, *Gome et al. v. Petpivot, Inc. et al.*, S.D.N.Y. 1:25-cv-05622. https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/58906826/Gome_et_al_v_Petpivot,_Inc_et_al; UniCourt docket summary of the Bronx filing, 9 June 2025, and the 8 July 2025 removal.

6. Rebecca Tushnet, “Deadly automatic litterbox might be falsely advertised as ‘safe,’” 25 February 2026, discussing *Gomez v. PetPivot, Inc.*, 2026 WL 507708 (S.D.N.Y. 24 February 2026). https://tushnet.com/2026/02/25/deadly-automatic-litterbox-might-be-falsely-advertised-as-safe/

7. CBS Pittsburgh, “Pa. Attorney General files lawsuit against Pittsburgh-area robotics toy company,” 18 September 2024; Regulatory Oversight, “Pennsylvania AG Sues Robotics Toy Company for Alleged Failure to Fulfill Prepaid Orders,” October 2024. https://www.regulatoryoversight.com/2024/10/pennsylvania-ag-sues-robotics-toy-company-for-alleged-failure-to-fulfill-prepaid-orders/. CBS Pittsburgh returned HTTP 406 to the fetch used for this paper; the 18 September 2024 date and the 14,000-order, $147–$655, and greater-than-$4-million figures are taken from the outlet’s published lede as indexed and from the Regulatory Oversight summary of the complaint.

8. Embodied, “Closing FAQs – Moxie Robot,” archived. https://archive.is/pSuho; Scharon Harding, “Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds,” *Ars Technica*, December 2024. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/startup-will-brick-800-emotional-support-robot-for-kids-without-refunds/; Federal Trade Commission, “Smart Products Surveyed Fail to Provide Consumers with Information on How Long Companies will Provide Software Updates,” 26 November 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/11/smart-products-surveyed-fail-provide-consumers-information-how-long-companies-will-provide-software; FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, “Smart Device Makers’ Failure to Provide Updates May Leave You Smarting,” Staff Perspective, November 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/smart-device-makers-failure-to-provide-software-updates-may-leave-you-smarting.pdf

9. ORF Kärnten, 7 May 2024; Die Presse, May 2024.

10. Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, “OPEI Announces First Ever ANSI Standard for Robotic Lawn Mowers,” 17 September 2019, recording approval of ANSI/OPEI 60335-2-107-2019 on 5 September 2019. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/opei-announces-first-ever-ansi-standard-for-robotic-lawn-mowers-300919896.html

11. iTeh Standards catalogue, “EN 50636-2-107:2015/FprA4:2026 Safety for Robotic Battery Lawnmowers,” status not published, stage 45.99. https://standards.iteh.ai/catalog/standards/clc/75851f30-9394-489f-bc37-c4a94d1d9ccc/en-50636-2-107-2015-fpra4-2026

12. SIST EN 50636-2-107:2015/oprA4:2023 enquiry sample, replacement of subclause 22.105.2. https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/76037/dc61da824def4812b420540ee8b0f61a/SIST-EN-50636-2-107-2015-oprA4-2023.pdf. The 2026 formal-vote draft was not independently retrieved in full; the sensor, timing, and cylinder-target language is taken from the 2023 enquiry text that the FprA4 project continues.

13. Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on general product safety, recitals 6, 23, and 25, applicable 13 December 2024. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R0988

14. Tushnet, 25 February 2026; UniCourt summary of the Bronx complaint’s 27 January 2025 factual allegations.

15. *Gomez v. PetPivot, Inc.*, 2026 WL 507708, as discussed in Tushnet, 25 February 2026.

16. Ibid.

17. *New York Post*, “NYC owners claim rescue cat fatally crushed by litter box,” 21 June 2025, as reprinted; Xie quote taken from the Post statement as carried in the 21 June 2025 syndication. Direct fetch of nypost.com and the Yahoo reprint timed out; the quotation is used only as a company statement.

18. Evan Ackerman, “Consumer Robotics Company Anki Abruptly Shuts Down,” *IEEE Spectrum*, April 2019. https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-robotics-company-anki-abruptly-shuts-down; Associated Press, “Robotics startup that made cute toy Cozmo shuts down,” 2019. https://apnews.com/article/6791b89791aa4aba97fab359d8f266ac. The IEEE Spectrum page timed out on fetch; the 1.5 million-unit figure and the late-April / 1 May 2019 shutdown window are taken from that article as indexed and from the AP report.

19. Regulatory Oversight, October 2024; CBS Pittsburgh, 18 September 2024.

20. “Digital Dream Labs: A Pittsburgh Court Has Put Vector’s Infrastructure Under a Receiver,” thedroidyouarelookingfor, 11 July 2026. https://vector.thedroidyouarelookingfor.info/2026/07/11/digital-dream-labs-a-pittsburgh-court-has-put-vectors-infrastructure-under-a-receiver/. Community docket reading of GD-25-013191; order PDF not independently retrieved.

21. Embodied, Closing FAQs, archived at https://archive.is/pSuho

22. Harding, *Ars Technica*, December 2024; a later *Ars Technica* report described the OpenMoxie attempt and the pre-cutoff OTA.

23. FTC Staff Perspective, November 2024, including the appendix category list.

24. Ashley Carman, “Dying social robot Jibo goes out with a song and a dance,” *The Verge*, 4 March 2019. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/4/18250104/jibo-social-robot-server-shutdown-offline-dead

25. Sean Hollister, “Amazon is bricking its Astro business robots less than a year after launch,” *The Verge*, 3 July 2024. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-business-robot-discontinued-refunds; Lauren Forristal, “Amazon retires its Astro for Business security robot after only 7 months,” *TechCrunch*, 3 July 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/03/amazon-discontinues-astro-for-business-security-robot/

26. International Organization for Standardization, ISO/FDIS 13482, *Robotics — Safety requirements for service robots*, under development, to replace ISO 13482:2014. https://www.iso.org/standard/83498.html. No published consumer-injury or CPSC humanoid-rule first for Figure, 1X Neo, or Optimus was located in the window.

Selected Bibliography

Ackerman, Evan. “Consumer Robotics Company Anki Abruptly Shuts Down.” *IEEE Spectrum*, April 2019. https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-robotics-company-anki-abruptly-shuts-down

Carman, Ashley. “Dying social robot Jibo goes out with a song and a dance.” *The Verge*, 4 March 2019. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/4/18250104/jibo-social-robot-server-shutdown-offline-dead

CENELEC. EN 50636-2-107:2015, *Safety of household and similar appliances — Part 2-107: Particular requirements for robotic battery powered electrical lawnmowers*, as amended A2:2020 and A3:2021, and draft FprA4:2026.

Federal Trade Commission. “Smart Products Surveyed Fail to Provide Consumers with Information on How Long Companies will Provide Software Updates.” 26 November 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/11/smart-products-surveyed-fail-provide-consumers-information-how-long-companies-will-provide-software

Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Smart Device Makers’ Failure to Provide Updates May Leave You Smarting.” Staff Perspective, November 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/smart-device-makers-failure-to-provide-software-updates-may-leave-you-smarting.pdf

Harding, Scharon. “Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds.” *Ars Technica*, December 2024. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/startup-will-brick-800-emotional-support-robot-for-kids-without-refunds/

Hollister, Sean. “Amazon is bricking its Astro business robots less than a year after launch.” *The Verge*, 3 July 2024. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190410/amazon-astro-business-robot-discontinued-refunds

ORF Kärnten. “Mähroboter-Unfall: ‚Gewebe wird zerhäckselt‘.” 7 May 2024. https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3256029/

Outdoor Power Equipment Institute. “OPEI Announces First Ever ANSI Standard for Robotic Lawn Mowers.” 17 September 2019. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/opei-announces-first-ever-ansi-standard-for-robotic-lawn-mowers-300919896.html

Regulation (EU) 2023/988 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 on general product safety. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R0988

Tushnet, Rebecca. “Deadly automatic litterbox might be falsely advertised as ‘safe.’” 25 February 2026. https://tushnet.com/2026/02/25/deadly-automatic-litterbox-might-be-falsely-advertised-as-safe/

Source note. This paper is an LC-3 / consumer-lane Incidental Research article. It expands the physical-harm decade of the 19 August 2026 Kinematic Risk Consumer Bulletin; it does not reprint that bulletin and does not carry an L-C1 watermark. Official thermal recalls of pool robots and mower docks, and later official actions in that lane (Honda Miimo, Zodiac, Canadian floor-robot files), are excluded except as a one-line pointer to a sibling paper. Amazon–iRobot merger politics, camera-annotator leaks, and home-humanoid pre-order marketing are excluded. Injury and death counts are used only when a named source states them. The 9 July 2026 Digital Dream Labs receivership is reported from a community docket reader; the order PDF was not independently retrieved. The FprA4:2026 formal-vote text was not independently retrieved in full; sensor-timing language is taken from the 2023 enquiry sample. Direct fetches of CBS Pittsburgh, *IEEE Spectrum* (Anki), *Axios* (Moxie), *PennLive*, and the *New York Post* / Yahoo syndication failed or timed out; those items are cited to outlet and date, with URLs given where the address is established. The analysis is current as of 19 August 2026 and should be revalidated against FprA4 adoption, *Gomez* 1:25-cv-05622, GD-24-010283, any Magnuson-Moss or §5 follow-on, and the first published home-humanoid injury, recall, or standard.