Mere Rhetoric: Bad Week For The Future Of Humanity. Great Week For Future Robotic Overlords.

In honor of the invention of the word 'robot', which happened on this day in 1921, we bring you a roundup of reasons why we're not going to be running things around here much longer:

* Killer wasp robots: Anti-semitic genocidal terrorists have like three years to live. Maybe:

Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet," would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.

Good luck hiding among children in dense neighborhoods, scumbags.

* Sniper robots:

Originally deployed to the DMZ, this robot is now heading to Iraq. It follows the sound of gunshots up to a mile away and then figures out where the snipers are hiding. Bonus geek cred: it's controlled with an Xbox controller. Best quote about this thing:

In theory, a REDOWL system could fire back at an enemy, but Thoren said the hardware isn't strong enough to support the weight of a gun. Besides, he said, it would be dangerous to have a weapon-toting robot that could open fire on its own.

Oh you think so doctor?

* Autonomous robots: Hey quick. What's better than super-aware, super-tiny robots that can detect and kill human beings? Making them autonomous:

A contest to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier, was launched in Singapore on Tuesday. The country's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes a stipulated set of tasks – yet to be revealed – in the fastest time possible.

No way this can go poorly.

Previously: "One Day Robots Could Fool Us Into Believing They Are Human", Mars Robots Pretty Damn Cool, Japanese Scientists Make Robot That Learns To Walk

About

Omri Ceren is a PhD student studying Rhetoric at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He lives in downtown Los Angeles.
Email: omri@mererhetoric.com
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