What Guards the Largest US Nuke Site? Duh!!: ROBOT SENTINELS ... & I'm not kidding

Fully automated robots now guard the Nevada National Security Site. These robotic sentinels are completely autonomous, capable of identifying human intruders as well as detecting broken locks around the site's perimeter. In fact, these diesel-powered centaurs can operate for a maximum of 16 hours, which give them plenty of capacity to patrol the most extreme corners of the 1,360-mile facility—larger than the state of Rhode Island. The base includes 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, and 700 miles of road, as well as ten heliports and two airstrips.

When the MDARS bots find an anomaly, they alert their human master. However, it's not hard to imagine these metal beasts equipped with non-lethal weaponry in the near future.

They are already among us...

I think before long we are going to have to move that great company known as Google to our Companies to Watch list.  They have not only envisioned, but apparently have tested cars that can drive by them self.  I am not joking.  If there is one thing that requires intelligence to identify threats and react it would have to be traffic.  Apparently, according to the article written by John Markoff, they even tested it in one of the traffic situations known worldwide as the craziest and most chaotic in the world: California.

Google Cars Drive Themselves In Traffic

"Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy, or intoxicated, the engineers argue."

Sometimes you have to wonder, "Do the scientists creating this Coming Machine Apocalypse ever step back and listen to themselves?"

My favorite line in the article was "Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the internet has."

Unfortunately for all of us, they don't know how right they are.

Robot Wear

One of the best and most ingenious companies ever created is Despair.com. Go to the website and I guarantee that you will laugh your human posterior off(unless you're one of the robots monitoring my website and trying to figure out where my bunker is located.) I have purchased quite a few of their products. I think I am going to have to buy this shirt.......

and this one...................
to help me remember that it won't be long until humans and flesh and blood animals will soon be obsolete.

Deckard

Cyborgs+Talking Dinosaurs=Cool

I am a geek like you so I know what you are thinking. You are thinking "Yeah robots are cool." Then you start to think about cyborgs and think "Cyborgs are cool too." Now you think "Dinosaurs are pretty cool as well, not as cool as cyborgs but almost as cool." Now you are thinking back to your childhood saying, "Man I miss my Transformers that would transform into Dinosaurs. Those were the good old days." Now you are thinking "Kate Beckinsale is hot" because after all, there are other things in life besides robots and dinosaurs.

What if I told you that someone had mixed robots with dinosaurs.......in a comic strip..........and the Dinosaurs talk.......about the philosophical issues that arise when defining what a cyborg is? It's true. Check out this comic by Ryan North.

Score One for the Humans

It might surprise many of our readers but I am actually a fan of cyborgs. I fear the development of sentient machines but cyborgs are humans with enhanced machine abilities. When the terminator comes to kill me I would like to have Robocop their to protect me. I don't think that we will be able to win in the human vs robot war, but if we have any chance, it will be our cyborg friends that help us overcome.

I am excited about new advances that Utah based company Sarcos, who was recently purchased by Raytheon. They have made an exoskeleton for military use that can increase human strength, and endurance. I would liken it to a real life version of the machines that were used to explore the jungle in the recent movie avatar.

The problem with the machine is that it needs to be plugged in to work so it would not be good for a search and destroy robot mission. Until then, let's hope Raytheon continues to develop machines for human use, and not machines that have the potential to gain sentience.

Deckard