It is a well documented and accepted scholarly fact that one day the human race will be serving robotic overlords. While it has been theorized that these robots could come from military or scientific super computers that gain sentience and take over computer networks, I believe that the dominant school of thought is that the uprising will be started and fought by smiling Japanese domestic workers unhappy with their work situations. Today I visited the island of Odaiba in Tokyo, and had a chance to meet our future masters first hand at the Toyota exhibition center.

First off, lets look at the robot that plays the Violin.

Very impressive, I couldn’t do that. I figure that its ability to make delicate movements with its fingers would make it perfect at sniping, torture, recon, and sabotage. Obviously later models would be sexy lounge singers who would get themselves into sensitive positions and take out our leaders one by one.

I also rode in another Toyota creation, a robotic driven car. It was clearly not made for human use as it drove extremely slowly, only on a set track, and sounded like it had an electric impact hammer assembly mounted to the steering column to execute the turning. This mechanism will obviously be installed by robots at the car factories without us knowing, and one day our auto-locking doors will lock, and the vehicle will drive us all off to the work camps that will inevitably become our homes.

See… proof.

Coming is one of the more scary devices. While it is billed as a development platform for bipedal locomotion mechanisms, or possibly a method of personal transportation for the disabled, we can all clearly see through its Steve Jobs white exterior to its true purpose as a battlemech.

Let me prove it to you. This is a film that was developed in the United States to train children of the 90’s in anti-robotic overlord combat. You can see its clearly anti-bipedal warrior propaganda, watch as the voiceless uncaring enemies destroy the brave but ultimately defenseless human piloted battlemechs without pause.

Man, wouldn’t it be great if they made a video game out of that?

Even our buildings will be robotic. In Odaiba, having a huge warehouse with lots of space does not mean that you need to place the cars around the showroom in a manner that is easily accessible. No, instead you need to stack the cars… VERTICALLY! Then you must engineer and produce a robot to retrieve the cars from their stack, and bring them down to the showroom. Of course this is too expensive to run on a daily operation, so after designing and building it, it only makes sense to leave it off at all times.

I have no video to show you of this… yet.

Now for a more serious take on all of this. I question the utility of the bipedal walking motion of the i-foot (bad engrish name). I know that the Japanese love giant fighting robots, so much so that I am sure they are already thinking ahead and designing the hard points for mounting of chainsaw-rocket launchers, but I just don’t see it as practical or necessary.

The robot that played the violin… now that is amazing. It demonstrates an ability to perform extremely fine tasks that would have been previously performed by humans. Think about the posiblities for manufacturing if you combine this sort of dexterity, with robot precision, and motion capture technology. One step farther to reducing the need for workers doing repetitive tasks. (Think thats a bad thing because it reduces jobs? … then do something about overbreeding.)

Automatic driving cars also make very little sense to me. I know that this is an important technology for things like moving materials around shipping docks, warehouses, and military bases, so I do no question it for that application. For the general road however, for consumers, I hope this technology never makes its way into my car. To remove the drive from the responsibility of driving, is like designing a robot to eat ice cream or get massages for you. Driving is a highlight of my day, I would pay NOT to have a robot do it. Another issue I have with it, is does the device really have to sound like an impact gun? Couldn’t Toyota just go ahead and use the same system they use in the LS series Lexus that is quiet?

… I guess I could see this being good for trucking as well.

The most interesting thing looking back though, is the fact that nothing Toyota actually had on sale caught my eye. The Toyota Supra I saw was awesome, the Mr2 was sexy, but neither are sold anymore. The only cool car they had on the showroom floor was the v8 IS series car, which is a fantastic vehicle, but its just not a Supra or MR2 for generating lust. Get on that Halo car Toyota, you need it.

-The Digital Kitty