And the first Alien! They have to watch that, too! Fucking Ash!
This looks like a job for…Hoverboy: the only hero protecting you from science! Love the dude swinging the chair and the girl wielding the - musket? That’s some good Ludditry!
I’m seriously failing to see the outrage here. Is the thought process that somehow the robots will spawn and…what? Eat all the flies? Ever up everything? WE don’t eat up everything and we already spawn at a fairly prodigious rate. Spiders don’t eat up all the flies and they spawn pretty fast too.
I can sort of kind of see the anti-nano tech thingy about gray goo…but this seems kind of silly. Of course, this all may be tongue in cheek…it’s hard to say sometimes here on the 'dope what is RO and what is just someone trying to be funny. I’m prepared to be whooshed…
-XT
If the system relies on bacteria to generate energy, then it is technically not a robot, but a cyborg.
So it’s not only generating power from animal tissue, it’s using our own gut flora to do it. In certain communities, it may also be eligible for emergency low-income financial aid programs.
On the bright side, since they are basically enslaving organisms for the purpose of killing other organisms, this means it may be inevitable that this army of carnivorous cyborgs will eventually wind up fighting PETA.
I like the way they justify the program on the UWE site:
NO THEY WON’T. Nobody has ever suggested that robots will be required to do any such thing. That was just an idea you guys had one night when you were high.
And even if a robot did need to extract energy from its environment, aren’t there like a zillion other ways to do it more efficiently? There is a device called a ‘solar panel’ in development that you jagoffs might want to investigate before you move ahead any further on your killer cyborg research.
Or you know what? I bet it would be far more practical to develop a BATTERY-DELIVERING ROBOT. Then when your other robots need more energy, instead of waiting for flies or Gypsies to wander past, they could send out an e-mail and GPS data to the battery company, and the battery robot would zip down and deliver it to them. You guys can have this idea for free; I consider it a small sacrifice for NOT having to dodge hungry cyborgs in my old age. It could even be designed with little snow tires, so it could show up during winter. You know what don’t show up during winter? FLIES. Your little cyborgs will be insane with hunger come the spring thaw, and I find it hard to believe that you West England folks haven’t anticipated that detail.
Look, we all know where you guys are coming from. You just wanted to be able to be able to say that you’d invented a killer robot. All of us can identify with that need. You don’t have to make up lies about it.
Bolding mine, I think that (forcing them to code in COBOL) is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions
This is off the topic, but may be a good place to ask. If any dopers have been spending their days standing in a pasture, and eat a lot of corn, could you PM me please? Include your address. I have a bunch of coupons for free beer massages that I’m trying to give away.
Sorry for the hijack.
That means our problem is somewhat different from what the OP envisions: not meat-eating robots, but cybernetic bacteria.
Cyborg microbes. It’s as if antibiotic resistance isn’t challenging enough. Jesus.
Nah it works great. Cause see we assimilate all the bad microbes. Then we install Windows ME on the poor buggers.
_INCOMMING COMMAND
_W.R.E.N.G
_DECODE
_WAR RAMPAGE ENABLED, NEUTRALIZE GLOBALLY
_COMMAND ACKNOWLEDGED
_EXECUTE
kill all humans
Resistance is delicious.
Mmmm. Resitalicious. [/homer]
At least they’re not eating old peoples’ medicines.
Or eating candy from a baby.
They built a robot that caught and “ate” slugs for power years ago. I say they because I can’t be bothered finding the book where I read it. Meh. The technology isn’t new, and the idea certainly isn’t. The only problem is the difficulty in capturing your prey. Slugs are slippery. Flies, well, fly.
And humans know how to use shotguns.
So long, suckers! wanders off to nearest corn field, whistling
Do *you *want to compete for food with a killer cyborg, Mr. Smartipants ? Oh suuure they’re all tiny and not self-replicating now. But… it would be so cool if they were ! 
“They” are the same guys, at the University of West England. Here’s the page on their site where they brag about inventing a robot that kills slugs.
I trust everyone here can see how these guys are securing their funding. Nobody likes slugs. Flies also have few vocal partisans. So by promoting their prototypes as a step toward ridding English sidewalks and apple orchards of such vermin, the UWE team can easily attract enough funds to keep their dubious research program afloat indefinitely, all the while arousing no suspicion over the colossal meth lab in the basement.
"Why certainly, we’d be delighted to give the funding committee a tour of our facility! You’ll all want to roll up your pant cuffs before we go downstairs, though; that’s where we keep the enormous vats of slugs, dead insects, decaying biomass and human sewage. Yes, you can smell it from here, aye! Phew… Well, that’s science innit?
“…Oh, you’d rather give that area a miss then? I don’t blame you. Moving on, here’s where we’re designing our next project: a robot that generates energy by setting homeless people on fire…”
whoooooosh
