Threatening Product Review: PAL Robotics

As we learn more about the coming machine apocalypse it becomes imperative to find those companies and people that are potential threats to helping robots achieve sentience. This threatlist can include entities that know they are working for the machines and also those that might be innocent developers of technology. Todays threatlist subject is PAL Robotics.

The name seems innocent enough and judging by the picture above found on their website it looks like a friendly helpful robot that everyone would like to be friends with. PAL robots is based out of Barcelona Spain and they say that their mission is to provide robotic products and services which can become an integral part of our daily life. Our service and humanoid robots are designed for the people and to serve the people, therefore the company wants to provide reliable solutions that really improve the daily work of our clients and their quality of life.

This sounds like a decent and respectable mission. who wouldn't want a robot workforce available to reduce our workload? The companies newest model the REEM H-2 pictured to the right provides a variety of functions. It can guide you, transport small packages, amuse you, call up information like weather, addresses, or nearby restaurants. It can also offer video conferencing.

The REEM H-2 has facial and voice recognition. I am not really sure why you would want a robot to be able to recognize people but this could be bad news if the robot were to decide to hunt you down.

Overall the company and products seem very non threatening and I expect they do what they do to help humanity. It is just important to remember that these advances in technology will one day fight against us. Everything we teach them to do can be used for other purposes. Although the threat in this companies case is not implicit, it is still a threat and they bear watching.

All is not as it seems,

Deckard