Claim
Video of a manually operated, tall and hefty robotic suit walking in front of a man dressed in a thawb and wearing a keffiyeh is being shared with a false claim that the man in the video is the monarch of Bahrain and the robot is his personal bodyguard. The 30 second video has been shared on Facebook with a caption, “King of Bahrain arrives in Dubai with his robot bodyguard fitted 360 with cameras and in built pistols. Technology moving very fast than ever in history. Any faults move no escape, you are dead.” BOOM also received the video on WhatsApp for verification via its helpline.
Fact
BOOM saw the word “Etimad” written on the floor in the video. We ran a keyword search with "Etimad robot" and found an article by Gulf News. The headline of the article reads: Meet Titan, the robot greeter in Abu Dhabi. The article states that the partially mechanised robotic suit Titan, is the world's first commercial entertainment robot artist developed by the British company Cyberstein. Titan is partially-mechanised and has an operator inside the suit who controls the movement of the robot from inside. Titan's Instagram account posted an image on February 18, 2019 and shows Titan wearing a beige colour vest with the UAE flag on it. In the viral video, the robot can also be seen wearing the same vest with the flag on it. BOOM debunked the same video in 2020 when it was viral with the same claim.