Well, we’re doomed.
Cyberdine NEC has released a hoard of ravenous, meat-hungry robots, which will surely spell the end for modern humanity as we know it. These vile fiends have tasted human flesh, and they like it.
Mocking us, the robot tells one man he tastes like bacon, and you can almost see the cold, dead cyborg lick his breathless lips. He tells another man he tastes like a delectable Italian cured meat, and you can imagine him sharpening his chef’s knife as it protracts from his rigid, pulseless left arm. The robot finishes us off with a hearty glass of Merlot and selects the sweetest apple from a bushel picked by the robot’s slave humans, who are harvesting fruits and fermenting grapes to feed and nurture the growing machine army. It is a systematic nightmare.
Okay, so maybe it hasn’t quite gotten that far yet.
NEC’s research has, however, developed a personal robot that can identify wine by type, taste and brand as well as identify different types of foods and determine their taste using infrared technology. The robot was able to determine the sweetest tasting of three apples in one example, while pointing out the other two were slightly sour.
It does all this by analyzing the chemical composition of the items placed before its IR spectrometer-equipped left hand.
So it’s right hand must be where the chain gun goes.
The two-year effort has led to a seemingly harmless looking robot, but when one reporter took things too far and put his own hand up to the robot, he was identified as prosciutto, a tasty Italian salted/cured meat. A cameraman gave it a try and came up bacon.
The technology represents a remarkable breakthrough in food and wine identification. Priceless bottles of wine can now be identified as legitimate or counterfeit without the need for opening the bottle. Food could possibly be identified as spoiled without anyone having to get sick in the testing process. The story was picked up in a Wired blog. While there are no plans to market the product just yet, a South Coast Today article shows that the car-priced robot could be brought down to as little as $1,000, making it another toy for those with the liquid capital to budget to such an expense.
And all it’s going to cost us is our freedom to live in a society that’s free of maniacal robot rule.