MechRC Bot Returns to Kill–Er…Teach Schoolchildren?
January 9th, 2009
You may remember MechRC from November when we told you about its availability in the states. Well it’s back in the news, not for killing human after human with emotionless logic, but rather for being repurposed as a teaching bot. Wild. A robot that will help people. Seemingly, that is; I wouldn’t wager it takes very long before the brainwashed pupils of this machine begin constructing a robot army to destroy the unaffected.
A group from University of Reading envisioned the bot, and now a British company is finalizing deals with hundreds of secondary schools in the UK to deploy their teaching bots. The MechRC in this role will serve as an entertaining, novel way to teach students about computers. It will also cause the slightly more incontinent ones to soil their knickers. The price for one of these pedagogical pretenders is hovering around $600. The more I read the source article the less I think the robot will actually be instructing classes. Perhaps it will serve as more of a programming platform. That is, until it achieves sentience.
