Jul 18 2009

Our robots won’t eat corpses.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

This is a short one.

CNet

EATR CREATORS: OUR ROBOTS WON’T EAT CORPSES

“For those of you who have been asleep since Tuesday, the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, or EATR, is a steam-powered robot being developed for military purposes. Its claim to fame is that it can “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically based energy sources). . .

. . .  The important message concludes with the words of Harry Schoell, the CEO of Cyclone Power Technologies (The EATR project is a joint venture between Robotic Technology and Cyclone Power Technologies):

“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission. We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.””

Well that’s a shitty day for your average CEO of a Defense-Industry robotics company . . . the day you have to clarify that no, your new project down at R & D isn’t a hungry corpse-eater that feasts on the flesh of the dead. It was nice of Harry to mention that he “completely [understood] the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population” though. It’s good to know that our concerns are being taken seriously.

We can all breathe a little easier knowing that these aren’t those zombie robots we’ve been hearing about.

What a crazy crazy world we live in. If it weren’t so frightening it would absolutely hilarious.

40 comments

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  1. I was worried there for a second!

  2. Can’t have a messy battlefield, now can we?

    One question: how do the robots know whether the bodies are really dead?

    • Inky99 on July 18, 2009 at 21:09
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    will take out the robots that “go rogue” and start eating flesh:

    http://www.defensetech.org/arc…

    • Inky99 on July 18, 2009 at 21:12
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    Here ya go.

    This is one of the creepist things ever IMHO:

    • Edger on July 18, 2009 at 21:20
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    But this Obama guy keeps nixing all the best ideas… 😉


    Obama Axes Pentagon Plan To Build Billion Dollar Tank In Shape Of Dragon

  6. The obvious Terminator problem notwithstanding, these things eat and steam any biomass.  Trees, plants, animals, you name it.

    Imagine if one were sent out unsupervised?

    The machine would just keep eating and destroying all organic life it came in contact with until something either killed it or it finally broke down, and for no other purpose than simply to keep eating and destroying more.

    Now think about a whole army of these things.

  7. and you can build one of those Matrix style EMP devices to fry all the electronic shit.  Let’s get busy.

  8. it’s like the MIC built the monsters from the final fantasy movie.

    Just great

  9. Well that’s a shitty day for your average CEO of a Defense-Industry robotics company . . . the day you have to clarify that no, your new project down at R & D isn’t a hungry corpse-eater that feasts on the flesh of the dead.

    I’m saving this diary for friends!

    Just out of curiosity, what does it DO with the bio mass and the energy it gets from it?

    Anything?

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