Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel News has emerged of a milestone reached on the road towards a potentially world-changing piece of technology. We speak, of course, of US military plans to introduce roving steam-powered robots which would fuel themselves by harvesting everything alive and cramming it into their insatiable blazing furnaces. The scheme is …
I love the way it slipped into fiction there.
OR DID IT?
Woudln't it be easier to make dirty pikey robots that unscrew stationary car fuel caps and sup the octanous liquid within?
No robotic masticating needed then. Also - recon is meant to be slightly stealthy, a trail of munched crops and a plume of smoke/steam on the horizon may give it away. What happens when it rains?
Will it have a battery backup, just in case? Or is the motion mechanical rather than steam->electricity? No, I refuse to clickon the link to learn more.
This post has been deleted by its author
All they have to do is develop a time machine within the next 6 years and we can travel to 2015 BEFORE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. Then suddenly, the future will resolve into a symbolically complete solution of itself and wink out of existence as we become caught in a non-terminating causal reality/unreality Mobius/Spielberg probability loop. THANKS DARPA!!!
*POOF!*
unless they can digest rocks...
Reminds me of all the apocalyptic stories I've read where the apparently invincible force is felled by the one thing the designers didn't take into account. It will probably be wear and tear that halts the giant, lumbering furnaces.
With a little more development, it could almost be a human. In fact, with some Deeper Programming, it is not difficult to turn Man into Machine, which is a much better and simpler option than contemplating and battling with the reverse/converse
Strangely enough the same thought has just been posted on the El Reg Brother/Sister site .... the Inquirer.... which is Spooky ....... "Wage a war...Lose the Peace" ... http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1433192/boffins-military-robots-conscience
If these things are built in the same factories as most American cars they'll only be able to travel at walking pace and be incapable of turning! All we need to do is keep up a brisk step and walk in a circle:
<zoinks! the humanoid energy being has evaded me. activating orientation adjustment circuits. oh sh*t! i haven't got any...>
Reminds me the game Thief 2 where the bad guy Karras wanted to erradicate everyone and replace them with metallic steam powered "Children of the builder".
"In one act, I will end all human suffering, and clear the path for the Builder to walk again on earth, history will move forward! My tireless children will build in his name, creating advancements beyond our understanding."
Truly, life is stranger than fiction!
...to remember where I had seen this before. DARPA as just copying ideas from Star Wars.
This is just a World Devastator.
"The world devastators were designed from ground based walking construction droids, which use a molecular furnace to 'consume' and remake debris and other items into useful/new constructions."
Might be to train plant and roadkill eating bots, and release them along highways. Never again will you have to see a weed or untrimmed lawn or dead skunk. With appropriate training, they could handle all the public lands yard maintenance, thus saving people some valuable tax monies which could be redirected to DARPA.
"Safe Harbor Statement
Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking
statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The company cautions that these forward-looking statements are further qualified by other factors. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any statements in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise."
The above is what you read at the end of the provided pdf link ...... and it should tell you a lot about the product's viability.
The world is a fairy tale and easily led by words.
... or should the 'biomass furnace which powers a steam generator driving a "waste heat engine" from Cyclone Power Technologies' be put into a passenger vehicle for trial?
THAT part of it sounds like a decent idea and a lot more likely to happen soon than the preferable Mr. Fusion.
Oh, and I do love the idea of having it feed on roadkill and Big Brother housemates.
"EATR"
That name right there, is purest WIN. :-)
"The idea of EATR is ostensibly that military reconnaissance droids far behind enemy lines would be able to forage for fuel."
And by happy coincidence would also plunder the resources of the enemy as they did so. Burn and pillage, yeah! Not exactly stealthy though.
"Steam is not sexy enough. So yesterday."
I'm sure those people responsible for developing and refining nuclear powered subs and aircraft carriers would disagree... :-)
"Might be to train plant and roadkill eating bots, and release them along highways. Never again will you have to see a weed or untrimmed lawn or dead skunk."
Awesome, where can I preorder one of these? Should take care of trimming my lawn, solve my mole/rabbit/neighbor's dog problems in a stroke, *and* double as a handy home defense system should some miscreant wander onto my property.
Hummers? Nah. They'd need to be able to turn waste into ersatz petrol to run 'em and if they could do that, we wouldn't need 'em in the first place.
They'll be generating power, so the obvious mitigation to the robotic fat bastard problem would be for them to nick a lard chariot, plug it in to a handy power take off and run around like that. So, if you wake up one morning and find that the trees are gone from your garden, your dustbins are empty and your segway's missing, you know what's happened.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
