5 The Underwater Chainsaw Bot

We built a whole lot of dams in the 20th century, and most of the time, this involved flooding large areas that contained trees. The trees remained below water in these reservoirs. They didn’t rot, and they stayed rooted. There are tens of thousands of these reservoirs, containing a whole lot of trees and a whole lot of wood that remains extremely inconvenient to harvest. 

Unless, that is, you happen to send in the Triton Sawfish Harvester. If trees are too deep for divers or conventional systems, you can send down an unmanned Sawfish. You’ll stay safely on dry land and operate it remotely, using its system of chainsaws to slash through trees. 

Since those underwater trees really aren’t carrying out any of the functions that trees in forests do, harvesting them is an environmentally friendly alternative to hacking your way through trees in the wild. It’s not that much more expensive than conventional logging, so the wood (dubbed “rediscovered wood”) is only slightly more expensive than conventional lumber. 

That all sounds fine enough. But this means that after the robo apocalypse, when you go diving to retrieve precious crystals from below, these Sawfish will be roaming free. And having acquired a taste for organic matter, they will have moved on to eating flesh. 

4 The Fish Scarer

Our next robot also travels underwater, and while you might dismiss our fears of the Sawfish as comic exaggeration, this next one is specifically designed to instill fear. 

It’s a robot version of the largemouth bass. You know, of course, about the Big Mouth Billy Bass, which is hung on the wall and sings prerecorded tunes, but that’s an American invention. This robo bass is Australian, and it mimics the American largemouth bass to frighten the aquatic pest known as the mosquitofish. This is more than just a rubber copy. It has its own vision system and is programmed to chase mosquitofish, while leaving alone other species we find to be more cute, such as tadpoles.

The robo bass doesn’t kill the mosquitofish. That would be too simple. Instead, scientists observe anxiety levels rising in mosquitofish after a single encounter with the robot. This change persists afterward, disrupting it in its usual routine of wreaking havoc on other species.

This also really is one of those examples of robots taking jobs that are traditionally a task for humans. Haven’t you seen that cap that reads, “Women love me, fish fear me”? Robots have now stolen one of those jobs, and the second cannot be far off. 

3 The Back Feeder

Meet Tomatan. It’s a robot designed to sit on your back and feed you tomatoes. 

Your first question, probably, is, “Why on earth can’t I just feed myself tomatoes?” The answer is Tomatan is designed specifically for runners, who are engaged in a race and can’t pause a moment for snacks. Your second question, perhaps, is, “Won’t a robot on your back hinder you from running, hinder you far more than the occasional tomato will help you?” The answer to that is almost certainly yes. Tomatan weighs 18 pounds, and even the lighter variant (weighing just 7 pounds) would offer some unwarranted burden to someone running competitively.

“So, why would anyone think this is a good idea?” you next ask. Also: “And why does it just feed you tomatoes, of all things?” 

The answer to both these is that Tomatan was created in 2015 by Kagome, a Japanese vegetable company. This wasn’t a publicity move by a robotics firm that wanted to show off what robots can do but was specifically commissioned by Kagome to get people interested in eating more tomatoes. 

“Tomatoes have lots of nutrition that combats fatigue,” insisted one company spokesperson. And if there’s something you’d rather eat instead, cast those thoughts away. Tomatan has decided to put his tomatoes in your mouth, and you’re not allowed to object.

2 The Giant Fire-Breathing Dragon

While we’ve been making plenty of jokes about these robots running amok, none of them has the power to actually walk. None of them but this next one, which also happens to hold the record for the largest walking robot in the world. Its name is Tradinno, and it’s a dragon that shoots flames. It measures 51 feet in length and weighs 11 tons. 

This robot was not built for industrial use, as there are more efficient ways of burning meat. It was built for dramatic use. Every summer, one town in Germany puts on a play called Further Drachenstich (“The Slaying of the Dragon”), a play that’s now over 400 years old. Traditionally, actors would play the dragon, but then the town spent a decade and millions of euros building this fully robotic replacement. 

Eventually, you’ll be called on to slay Tradinno, in what villagers will interpret as a representation of the battle between good and evil. The dragon will even bleed, as it contains 21 gallons of stage blood to dispense when the time comes. 

Locals nicknamed Tradinno “Fanny,” for reasons that might make sense in German. It’s not because it’s a giant butt. A robot butt would be an absurd idea.

1 The Robot Butt

Companies build cars to handle human beings. We’re all very familiar with one way companies use inanimate substitutes for this: They smash cars filled with crash-test dummies into walls. But crashes aren’t the only circumstances that take their toll on car parts. Simply sitting on a car seat wears it down over time, and manufacturers must test seats to see just how well they hold up. 

They could employ someone to sit in a car seat for several years straight. But that would take too long, and it would be a miserable use of someone’s time. So, Ford instead uses a robot butt (the “robutt”) that exerts 10 years of wear-and-tear by repeatedly pressing on a seat thousands of times in just three days. 

If this were just a robot arm applying force to a seat, that would almost not be worth mentioning. But Robutt’s secret weapon is a dampness dispersal system, which simulates the influence of years of butt sweat. This ensures that a seat that survives the Robutt will also survive even the most moist of consumers. 

As for what a robotic butt will do to you once it attains sentience and attacks, we hardly need to describe that. Personally, we recommend everyone invest in armored medieval underpants. 

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for more stuff no one should see.