Defend yourself against the coming robot rebellion

Sunday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had an amusing feature story about Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute grad Daniel H. Wilson's new book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion (which has already been set up as a film at Paramount by the screenwriters of the unfortunate Herbie: Fully Loaded).

A robot trying to find you will use thermal imaging based on the roughly 91-degree temperature of human skin, so smearing yourself in cool mud will confuse them. If your robot "smart" house - one wired with video surveillance and computer gear - tries to trap you, chop your way out with an ax and don't take your cell phone, because the house will track you with it. (A tip for telling whether a new acquaintance is a real person or a humanoid robot: "Does your friend smell like a brand-new soccer ball?")

In what may or may not be a coincidence, the new Hammacher Schlemmer catalog just arrived with a new lifesize, 7ft. tall animatronic Robby the Robot replica on the cover. It is a thing of beauty, pre-programmed to recite lines from Forbidden Planet (synchronized with the neon tube lights, of course), or you can project your voice through Robby with an included wireless microphone. A remote control allows you "to move his computer relay assembly, rotate his servo-controlled head, spin his planetary gyro stabilizers, and rotate his scanners while various lights flash." But sadly, it doesn't walk, which I tend to think it should, given the $50,000 price tag.

I mean, hell, for that price you could raise an entire army of Robosapiens, Roboraptors, and RoboPets. Not that I'm suggesting that, of course. (Although they are all currently on sale at Amazon via those links...)