This just in from Stealth Correspondent Jared The Roboticist:

I have undeniable that the Roomba is no meager vacuuming robot, but is in fact a fully aware killing machine. I can only suspect why my Roomba Scheduler tried to burn down my apartment, maybe because of the beer I spilt on it, breaking its clean button, maybe it feels I don’t appreciate all the cleaning it does for me, but I came home to my roomba pulling the power cord from my printer out of the outlet strip. I picked the roomba off the cord and sent it on its way. I noticed a short time later that it had started to push a small wire bracket that I can only assume is stored inside its chassis for such devious purposes.

(Jared kindly enclosed photos of The Incident):

I watched as it pushed this bracket directly into the prongs of the power cord which the Roomba had so expertly pulled only part of the way out of the power strip. To my horror, this created a huge spark which turned out the power just in time for me to see my power strip catch fire. Luckily, I was able to immediately put it out, but I know now to never trust this killbot with my floors again.

You heard it here first, kids. Jared has pinpointed the beginnings of the upcoming robotic revolution. Make nice now and be the last up against the wall.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Bill Joy Might Be Right, Robot Overlords. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.