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The Stealth Incursion of Zombie-Killing Robots Into Our Lives

By crooky | June 17, 2008

This Father’s Day, one of my children gave me a copy of How To Build a Robot Army: Tips On Defendiing Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies. It’s a great book and full of new insight not already covered by Engadget and blogs of that nature. This book reads like Popular Mechanics on LSD.

Some initial highlights:

“It is only natural for humans to form a deep social attachment with a girl-shaped hunk of plastic. Resist this urge and concentrate on objectifying the womanbot. In a life-or-death situation you cannot hesitate to hand your fembot a cutlass and send her into battle against foulmouthed, male-chauvanist pirates.”

Dr. Daniel Wilson on How to Keep a Sexy Fembot Fit For Battle.

“Convert your harmless [Roomba] into a mechanized soldier fighting for the forces of awesomeness. Add passive weapons. Duct tape a pair of scissors (or a steak knife) to the top. Consider aiming the knife straight up, in case an enemy steps on your low-profile bot.”

Dr. Daniel Wilson on How to Weaponize A Robotic Vacuum.

I’m not a good enough writer to make this stuff up. It got me thinking though - robots really are a bigger part of our lives than they have been in the past. Some of my friends have Roombas. Others have given their kids RoboSapien toys which are actually simplified robots.

The US military makes heavy use of battlefield robotics and some of this technology is starting to be introduced into police departments in the US such as the LAPD.

The Japanese are always pushing the envelope with Robotics and companies like Mitsubishi are pitching home-based robots for keeping your kids and elderly loved ones company. I wonder if you can weaponize them?

In the end, this book ignited thoughts and feelings about robots that I hadn’t had since I was young. You see - when I was in highschool, I wanted to work in robotics. I studied physics and math very hard to get into mechanical engineering when I hit university. Alas, there were prettier girls in Communications.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Levity, Technology |

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