http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html?test=latestnews
TL;DR: U.S. Military making self-refueling robots that can use whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.
That’s both awesome and horrifying.
As if Skynet wasn’t bad enough…now they’re gonna EAT us. D:
lol, the first word to pop into my head was SKYNET.
What if it needs fuel and I walk by? Will it try to eat me?
What a stupid idea. Don’t we destroy enough organic matter already? Also, there is a joke here about fat americans but I can’t think of it.
Do you guys remember in Ur-Quan masters when the Slylandro bought a self replicating probe that was sent to find new life, but they accidentally set its replicating function to 999 so every time you meet it says it comes in peace but then tries to destroy your space ship and eat you? fun times.
So what’s to stop it from eating a live human?
It shouldn’t eat living organisms because the specs say it has optical, ladar, infrared, and acoustic sensors.
I find the following declaration in the specs ridiculous, though.
For example, about 150 lbs of vegetation could provide sufficient energy for 100 miles of driving, depending on circumstances.
150 lbs for 100 miles?!? What a waste of vegetation.
The first thing that popped into my head was Screamers. “An eyeball coould maek a god blade wax”. shudder
Unless you keep in mind the fact that human males are about 150lbs and these are war machines >_>
The penalty for a robot harming a human will be one thousand years frozen in carbonite!
Hmm…this is rather interesting. I guess it could go quite a ways if it manages to find or kill something every 100 miles or so. As long as it doesn’t malfunction and trigger some SKYNET-type shit…that could be bad.
Interesting thought: Maybe it can feed off trash? An army of those things could eat a garbage dump and wreck havoc! (Alas, that’s likely wishful thinking on my part.) Those things might save the environment or solve our trash problem.
So instead of Cheyenne Mountain Skynet will be based on Garbage Island?
I’d find it barbaric if somebody I knew was eaten by a robot. I’d want their family to sue whomever came up with such a grotesque idea. It’s as disrespectful as cannibalism and slightly less (or more? some would argue you’re adding to the corpse?) than necrophilia.
Yeah, I’d be really upset if my body was used instead of being allowed to sit around and rot in a wooden box so it can’t even fertilize the ground, like God intended. It’s absolutely ignoble for one’s death to be anything other than a total waste.
I’d rather my organs go to heal the needy or be used in odd renimation projects =p
The robot is needy. It NEEDS your corpse to fuel itself. That sounds needy.
Paitent died on transit to the hospital? No problem! Shove the stiff to the ambulance! It’s right there, anyways.
Oil spill killed off some killer whales? Feed them to the tanker! No problem!
Nintendo Deuxtron ran out of power? Feed you’re ailing grandmother to it! That’ll kick in a few extra hours of Sim-Time MMOFPS!
The future is… all sorts of fucked up.
This goes against everything in our society that holds respect for the dead and the caring of the remains. Why not just learn to make soylent green from bodies too, there’s fuel for robots and for people?
They aren’t going to fuel them with dead bodies unless they are used for war. We need dead bodies for burn victims and the like.