Uh oh. Science fiction writers and directors have mined the idea of a robot revolution for decades, producing such classics as the “Terminator” film series. Doomsayers will take this next bit of news as evidence for humanity’s downfall as the Taser International corporation announced that it has teamed up with the iRobot Corporation to produce a new line of robots capable of delivering a shock charge to people.
These taser-equipped sentries will be sold to the military and police forces in the hopes of being used in a situation where non-lethal force is required to subdue an opponent. A human operator is still necessary to give the robot a command to subdue someone but already critics are warning that the day may come when the robot’s software is smarter and it doesn’t need a flesh buddy to give it any orders. Something like that went down in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”, didn’t it?
The two companies didn’t say when the first taser-armed iRobot would come off of the assembly line or where it would be deployed to at first. Still, this news makes us look at our Roomba in an entirely new light…
Friday, January 9, 2009
Robotic Future Shock
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