back to article Danes tout flamethrower-packing robot 'farmworker'

Danish agro-boffins have developed a robot which appears at first sight to be a welcome diversion from the ongoing parade of deadly military slaughter machines. "Hortibot", brainchild of Scandinavian scientists led by Dr Rasmus Nyholm Jørgensen of Aarhus University, is supposedly a peaceful robot farmworker. It uses GPS to …

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  1. M. Poolman

    Puny humans

    "Hortibot boffin Claus Aage Grøn Sørensen told the Daily News that the flamethrower and deadly energy beam were only for use on weeds, "

    Pah ! In the eyes of the uber lizard master race, *ALL* puny humans are no more than weeds

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jill came tumbling after

    In the picture on their website, it resembles the farming robot from the first "Command and Conquer" game. It is imperative that we capture these things or, failing that, destroy them. Then tank rush the Dutch base. Danish base. Dutch base. I can't remember.

  3. Chizo Ejindu

    I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

    Don't you all realise, they are here now, running the world! Let's look at the evidence...

    All mechanical thingys need lubrication for metallic joints right? The most common and abundant lubricant is oil right? And currently the "coalition of the willing" is engaged in a "hearts and mind" kill-a-thon in Iraq to secure all the lubricant the machines will ever need, for the next 50 years or so. Is it strange that western governments spend ten's of billions on hi-tech warfare and it always comes down to young frontline grunts shooting poor people, not ultra-tech machines disarming terrorists from the other side of the world. How better for the machines to take over then to get us to wipe ourselves out!

    In conclusion to my rambing rant i'll say this - the best trick the devil ever pulled was not convicing us that he doesn't exist, but convincing us that he's not a robot!

  4. Lloyd

    Oooh

    Sounds like Bill Hicks talking about Iraq War 1:

    "Farming equipment which they converted into military equipment, okay, you got me I’m curious, exactly what kind of farming equipment is this?“

    "Oh okay, well it’s stuff for the farmers of Iraq.”

    "Yeah? What? “

    "Ooh okay, er well ooh one of the things we gave them was for the little farmer, a new thing we came up with called er the er, flame-throwing rake. Noooo, it was for the farmer, see. He would rake the leaves and then just turn around Boooo. But you know what the Iraqis did with that?”

    "There’s no trees in Iraq, what are you sending them rakes for, you asshole?"

    “We could have done our research better perhaps yes.”

  5. Richard

    We need to know...

    ...if the killbots have a built-in kill limit

    [Coat pre-fetched]

  6. Nick Pettefar

    Run, the Vikings robots are coming!

    They'll be filling longboats full of these bots and heading for Lindisfarne again.....

    Lock up your daughters!

  7. A J Stiles

    Organic?

    I could see this having the potential to cut pesticide use; but would crops tended with the aid of a machine be automatically disqualified from being labelled "organic" ?

  8. Graham Bartlett

    Napalm the cats!

    I for one welcome our cat-barbequeing overlords. Especially when I'm weeding and I discover yet another deposit of feline foulness.

  9. George

    Doctor Who

    Oh, great. Who sent the Dutch translations of the 1965 episode "The Chase"? Someone apparently wanted a flamethrower wielding 'Mechanoid' enough to build one for himself!

  10. JASR

    website ' Revision 24-Oct-05'

    'They've' been out there for 1.5 years already... and the master is no more :-o

    Lock your garden implements in the shed, Unplug the circuit breakers for the hovermower.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good for cats...

    I rather like the idea of one of these robots, especially if it can be equipped to deal...permanently...with the local cat population.

    Its been difficult to keep them under control since we signed that convention banning landmines...

  12. Andy Bright

    Westfall?

    Are you sure you mean Denmark and not the World of Warcraft area of Westfall? Because these maniacal mechanical golems sound a lot like Harvest Watchers.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Title

    They come here, taking our jobs, ravishing our daughters (maybe), and we just let them.

    Hope they have a small carbon footprint, that's all I can say.

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