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Well I think its safe to say that a robot uprising has already started.  No, don’t worry it probably won’t reach us anytime soon for the robot in question is the Mars Lander.

That arm looks mighty deadly.

I got this story today from a PC World article:

The robotic arm on the Mars Lander found itself in a tough position over the weekend.

After receiving instructions for a movement that would have damaged its wrist, the robotic arm recognized the problem, tried to rectify it and then shut down before it could damage itself, according to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander’s robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

The show-stopper this past weekend came in the form of an errant instruction from Earth. Arvidson explained that the robotic arm had been working with an instrument that basically is an electric fork that gauges thermal and electric conductivity in the Martian soil. The arm had stuck the fork in the ground to run analysis. Over the weekend, scientists sent the robotic arm instructions to pull the fork out of the ground and keep it vertical while moving it to the side and shaking any excess soil off of it.

However, the movement was forcing the robotic arm to twist its wrist too far. The robot realized that it was about to damage itself so it moved the other way and then realized that it no longer had the proper coordinates for what to do next, so it left the fork sticking up in the air, stuck its scoop in the ground and stalled itself.

Ok so its not the end of the world…yet.  But hey if thats happening now, whats to come in 20-30 years time?

-Jason