Well if it gets out of control, it will probably fall over and not be able get up. If it malfunctions, probably the worst thing that could happen would be the battery pack catching fire, because of consumer safety laws there will be safeties in place to prevent this.
Hacking is an interesting one, only because current laws assume the perpetrator must be in proximity to the crime.
However, this robot is almost certainly not autonomous with the operator hidden behind the camera. Because it's not autonomous, it's going to be difficult to teleoperate over the internet. Telerobots are slow and not very capable[0]. With lag, it's going to be difficult to stab someone with a knife much less pick up a knife.
However, even slow telerobots present interesting legal issues. One might hack a telerobot in the home of some people who are on vacation and use it to unlock the doors so some guy can go in and steal stuff.
One of the best XKCDs ever is about this what-if scenario. It addresses full robot sentience -- if they suddenly became aware and tried to take over the world Terminator style. An "out of control / hack / malfunction" would be even more laughable:
How about in a case of a robot raping someone? Should I just let it rape me or someone near me until the batteries die?
Sorry, I was lucky enough to be born in a country where I'm allowed to defend myself. And if a robot or a person starts raping me, I'm not going to let them finish until they wear out.
Robots are currently bumbling electric imbeciles and do not perform well in such adversarial scenarios. They are also more fragile than they seem. One could permanently modify the robot's kinematics with the swift impact of an office chair or percussively decommission it's lidar sensor with a baseball bat.
Hacking is an interesting one, only because current laws assume the perpetrator must be in proximity to the crime.
However, this robot is almost certainly not autonomous with the operator hidden behind the camera. Because it's not autonomous, it's going to be difficult to teleoperate over the internet. Telerobots are slow and not very capable[0]. With lag, it's going to be difficult to stab someone with a knife much less pick up a knife.
However, even slow telerobots present interesting legal issues. One might hack a telerobot in the home of some people who are on vacation and use it to unlock the doors so some guy can go in and steal stuff.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-softwar...