You don’t have to get all exotic on this. I’ll take an HK 91 and a bandolier of 20 round mags loaded with 7.62x51 AP, although any modern rifle loaded with true AP ammo will punch holes right through Sparky. See here for what 7.62x51 AP can do, along with some lesser calibers.
That’s why I was asking: I’ve seen a lot of Hong Kong movies, and Robotrix would have been my top guess, but I didn’t remember a lesbian orgy in it.
Sex and Zen, with the mechanical penis, on the other hand…
Carry on.
It occurs to me that a robot, like any machine (or person, for that matter) has to dispose of waste heat unless it wants to end up scrap like a car with a bad radiator. (Especially if it’s got Intel inside.) So if we go with the “sticky stuff and grit” approach, we should mix in some expanding polyurethane foam (e.g. Great Stuff). Or, if it’s air-cooled, tar and feathers would work. Although my previously mentioned flame thrower would be faster and would wreak havoc on any semiconductors.
Is it one of these robots? If so, run.
If its the smaller Army SWORDS robot, run up and kick the fucker over, take its gun, and cap its ass. 
Punch holes through. Are you trying to get people killed? If you really want to stop your Grandma from being killed by giant robots, then you need to take chunks out of them. Use explosive rounds!
That or MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER
Note:
Buy Old Glory Insurence
Hydrochloric comes to mind. If you spill it on your skin, you can leisurely walk over to the nearest sink and rinse it off without so much as a rash, but it enthusiastically attacks most metals. Unless, of course, your robotic foe has an outer layer of copper, silver, gold, platinum, or iridium.
One might also try saltwater, which is completely harmless to humans, short of drowning, but which will short out (and eventually corrode) many robots.
And if your foe should happen to be positronic, with a qualifier-weakened First Law, a low dose of gamma rays should do the trick, at minimal danger to yourself. Just make sure you don’t use harmless infrared rays, instead, in case the robot knows the difference.
Why not a flamethrower?
Electronics are often vulnerable to high temps. Robots will have plenty of electronics. Even miniscule expansion of components could cause articulated joints to bind or welds to split and crack. Lubricants could be cooked off or boiled away, soldered connections in servos or other small motors or electrical comonents could melt/break.
I don’t know – it sounds pretty nasty to me:
severe burns, ulceration, permanent eye damage, and respiratory damage. Maybe you’re right and if your battle with the robot is in a room with a sink, you’ll be all right. But I’m thinking that any concentration that’s going to do immediate damage to a robot won’t do flesh any good.
The gamma ray emitter is a good idea, though. Semiconductors aren’t going to like that at all, and shielding would be very heavy.
I like the saltwater cannon idea. Short the little bastard out. However, a carefully designed robot won’t be very susceptible to this, assuming all the proper seals are in good shape. So, I’m thinking something that sprays a lotta lead without being overly cumbersome. Thompson submachine gun is my call. Flamethrowers and grenade launchers are also good.
Actually, given its effect on electronic components, a can of Coke should do the trick quite nicely - I should know, having spilt some on a VCR once, back when they cost real money. Actually, my three year old son is pretty good at destroying expensive electrical equipment: he destroyed a toaster by carefully pouring fruit juice down it {thank God we keep them unplugged}: he had seen helicopters dousing fires with monsoon buckets on TV, been told that the toaster was dangerous because it could burn him, put two and two together, and voila! Plus he hates robots. Yep, send in Little Case with a can of Coke.
I just fear we might be underestimating the threat, here. For instance, the T-800’s “hyper-alloy combat chassis,” for instance, is described as being “fully armored, very tough.” AND was designed to operate while covered with warm meat. Though, obviously, they’re not invulnerable. And other androids or robots may be even less “tough.” (Or even more tough.)
Food for thought, or something, I guess.
Do they make a grenade-launcher sized HEAT round? Best combination of exterior penetration and wide internal damage I can think of.
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- Microwaves destroy pretty much all current types of IC circuits–maybe take the magnetron out of a microwave oven, and hook it up to a backpack of batteries? Wouldn’t be so much a gun as a “microwave-flame-thrower”…
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- Microwaves destroy pretty much all current types of IC circuits–maybe take the magnetron out of a microwave oven, and hook it up to a backpack of batteries? Wouldn’t be so much a gun as a “microwave-flame-thrower”…
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Since the OP specified “small arms” which generally doesn’t include flamethrowers, grenade launchers, EMP generators and 1920s style death rays, I’ll suggest the Ithaca MAG-10 Roadblocker, a 10-ga shotgun used by the police to disable cars by the simple expedient of firing a slug through the engine block.
That’s a real, honest-to-goodness small arm used to destroy heavy machinery.
I do not recommend trusting your life to a weapon when confronted by a robot, especially as the force needed to blow it up will likely hurt any innocent bystanders, possibly yourself included. Instead, train yourself heavily in several styles of martial arts and come equipped in, as this is a bit in the future, a body suit that makes you really, really frickin’ strong, and start running immediately.
The problem with all of this is that there is no reason a robot cannot run 250 miles per hour, run through a brick wall or jump 50 feet in the air. Most of the movies i’ve seen have given them more or less human limitations. These dude’s aren’t human and shooting at them provides absolutely no promise. You gotta’ meet them on their level, which means extending yourself to whatever the capabilities of the World’s Baddest Ass Robot are.
Who’s with me?
Wouldn’t effective robot design take this into consideration and therefore leave no central point of weakness, such that a 10 guage, while making a big hole, doesn’t stop it?
Barring super-scifi technology, it would be impossible to design a human sized robot that didn’t have any weak spots, or didn’t suffer significant damage when you put large holes in it. If the robot is bipedal like the one in the OP, simply blowing one of its legs off would keep it from chasing you at more than a crawling pace.
Well, it depends on what sort of power source you have with the robot, and what it is made out of. Unless the robot has a Mr. Fusion inside of it, having enough power to run at 250 mph is for any period of time is going to be tricky, not to mention the limited traction you would get by using bipedal motion. Some oil that the robot doesn’t detect, or a bunch of ball bearings thrown on the ground in front of it, and that 250mph robot is going to be eating a lot of pavement.
And even if you made the robot out of the best materials we have today -titanium alloys and advanced ceramics, it will still take lots of damage if it slips while running at 250mph, or plows through a brick wall, or when it comes down from that 50ft jump. Just look at how much damage cars made from pretty strong steel take when they hit something solid at only 50 mph. The “hyper-alloys” and other sci-fi materials would have to be vastly stronger than current materials to allow the killbot to operate under these parameters.
And of course, if the human-sized robot is built out of anything resembling normal materials we have today, a high-powered rifle with AP rounds is going to be able to punch holes in it. And some of those holes are going to destroy important electronics, or hydralic lines, or heck, just the structural supports like severing an arm or leg.
In which case the only answer to the question is to vaporize the robot entirely. I guess if we’re hypothesizing a near-indestructible robot with no weak points we can certainly dream up a small arm that will disentegrate anything but that kinda removes this from proper GQ territory.
“Nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Perhaps what we need is improved ammunition?
A small-caliber, high powder charge, depleated-uranium armor piercer?
A weapon like THIS, but with the above-mentioned ammo?