When a house is ablaze in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Robot fireman!
Imagine, if you will, that you are trapped in a building that is on fire. As you cower in the corner trying to remember if it’s “stop, drop and roll” or “pop, lock and troll” (which, incidentally, sounds like an amazing dance move), the sounds of sirens interrupt your thought process. You’re saved! And then this monstrosity enters the room.
Oh god. Kill it with fire.
I don’t know about you, but the only thing I find more terrifying than fire -you know, besides clowns and mall Santas- are robots that cannot distinguish the difference between fires and humans. It’s like someone was watching Predator and thought “it’d be amazing if we used the heat-seeking technology that he uses to kill people, and then choose to not differentiate between the heat signatures of humans and those of flames”. You know, because fire doesn’t burn hotter than people, or anything.
“I’m going to end you”
Realistically, paper ignites around 451 degrees Fahrenheit (suddenly Fahrenheit 451 makes a lot more sense), which according to my calculations, is much hotter than the average 98 degrees of your puny body. Can they not just program the robot to ignore heat signatures under 150 degrees? I don’t mean to be all picky about this, but the damn robot has a face, a mission to destroy all fire, and an inability to distinguish if it should save you or end you.
“What did I tell you about dismembering humans? Bad robot.”
I’d give the creators a 10 for creativity, but a 4 for execution. The concept of having a robot that can enter a burning building in the midst of a war zone is amazing. However, the fact that the robot relies on a mix of verbal and physical commands sounds a little frightening.
This signal means “stop trying to kill me in my sleep.”
Yes, it is built to recognize the difference between “us” and “them”, but this robot can’t tell the difference between “us” and “fire” so I’m not terribly confident about the facial recognition aspect.
