The now-viral incident took place on Monday, November 10, at the Yarovit Hall Congress Center in Moscow, where Russian robotics startup Aidol chose to showcase its first AI-powered humanoid robot. As the robot awkwardly made its way onto the stage under the careful supervision of two handlers, it tried to wave to the audience and ended up face-planting.

After trying to lift it back up, the handlers decided it had had enough, covered it with a black cloth, and carried it out of the hall, suspending the presentation much earlier than everyone expected. The audience was eagerly awaiting to witness Aldol’s abilities, including object manipulation, movement, and natural communication powered by offline AI, but were treated to a face-plant instead.

“I hope this mistake will become a learning experience,” Vladimir Vitukhin, CEO of Aidol, told the crowd, but the incident was viewed as an embarrassing fail for the Russian robotics industry as a whole, not only for Aidol. Its first humanoid robot was advertised as 77% composed of Russian components, which didn’t seem to help it too much.

Although Aldol was brought back on stage eventually, where it managed to remain upright, clips of its awkward movement and embarrassing fall were shared on Russian social media and ended up making international news headlines.

Interestingly, this is not Russia’s first robot blunder. Back in 2018, during a scientific forum in the city of Yaroslavl, visitors got to see Boris, a highly-advanced robot that happened to be just some guy wearing a robot suit.