Yes, our dreams are coming true. With these helicopter robots, the robot army is now able to build untold numbers of towers from which to watch us as they push us down the chutes to the subterranean battery farms.
... but first it will crawl up to the top of your head and, with one of its creepy arms, burrow into your ear and eat your brain. When it's all happy and full it will signal to its soft, horrible, equally-full millions of buddies and they will form a massive soft robot chain - a robotic centipede if you will - and strangle all that lives. So, thanks for that Harvard University. Via io9.
And just wait until it unhinges its jaws and releases hundreds of smaller robot snakes, which will tangle with your legs as you attempt to run away. Via Neatorama.
A concerned reader, who's aware of my well-founded and entirely rational robot paranoia, forwarded me a link to a very scary video from Popular Science. Popular Science says that, "What's especially impressive is that the robot is capable of biking just like a human - it moves and brakes solely through the strength of its own adorable little body." Adorable, indeed, Popular Science. Especially, when there are 50,000 of them on 50,000 bicycles. Outfitted with 100,000 poison arrows. All coming down your street in an overpower-and-tag formation. How adorable do you imagine that will be? Adorable like the decor at the battery farm? Adorable like the burned-out husk of your house? Adorable like millions of sharp robot teeth? (Thank you, Greg, for adding a whole new layer to my nightmares).
... and jump on one leg. Which is not going to make it any cuter when there are 10,000 of them descending upon your neighbourhood. The drinks they will pour you are going to be spiked with something delicious to calm you down and make you less likely to damage yourself on the way to the battery farm. There is nothing more annoying than a defective power source.
It's a well-known fact that robots hate naked people. It reminds them of their own lack of unmanufactured skin and that makes them sad. But since the robots are now learning how to dress us, they will no longer have to suffer the ickiness of carrying us to the battery farms unclad. Progress is our friend. (Thank you, Mary Louise).
When the robot apocalypse comes, perhaps you will not be woken in the middle of the night and carried off to the battery farms by shiny, headless machines. Perhaps small, troll-like machines with many, many legs will disguise themselves as your pillow and smother you while you dream about an alternative universe.
... because then it would pretty much be over for us. A robot that does push-ups? Really? This is a good idea? A robot who trains to get ready for the planet take-over? Thank you so much Boston Robotics for your contribution to the demise of us all. Via Neatorama.
Malene’s interests and hobbies include Schadenfreude, sci-fi and fantasy (good and bad alike), hilarious hair pieces, age-inappropriate celebrity crushes, messed-up starlets, waiting for the next Star Trek movie, hating Björk, creative profanity, disobedient robots, fake celebrity relationships, post-apocalyptic dread, singing super-villains, baseball, David Beckham (but only when he keeps his mouth shut), vampires and knitting tiny sweaters for her seven cats. That’s not true. Maybe.
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