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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Spider (Robotic Insects) | ||
| Scuttling insect robots. |
Maniacal bad guy played by KISS' Gene Simmons creates scuttling insect robots with acid-tipped stingers; they chase Tom Selleck. What more do you need to know?
 (Killer-Spider-Robots attack Tom Selleck in Runaway) |
| Technovelgy from Runaway,
by Michael Crichton. Published by Tri-Star Pictures in 1985 Additional resources -
|
These little guys were pretty scary - and they worked in packs.
See this video (*spoiler alert!) for creepy details.
Here's an excerpt from the movie script:
I can't have any witnesses.The spiders have been programmed to
kill the first one off the elevator.
They'll let you in.
But they won't let you out.
There's nothing you can do!
Compare to the metallic spider from The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells, the scarab robot from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the spider robot from The Mystery of Element 117 (1949) by Milton K. Smith, the mechanical hound from Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury, the metal insects from The Invincible (1954) by Stanislaw Lem, the Sheem spider robot from The Witches of Karres (1966) by James Schmitz, the spider tripod from Rendezvous With Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke, the spider cable device from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield and the recon spiders from Minority Report (Movie) (2002) by Steven Spielberg.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Runaway
More Ideas
and Technology by Michael Crichton
Tech news articles related to Runaway
Tech news articles related to works by Michael Crichton
Spider (Robotic Insects)-related
news articles:
- RISE Robot: Six-Legged BIODYNOTICS Runaway
- N.S.E.C.T. Robotic Attack Insect From Tyco
- Wall-Climbing Robots Use Compliant Electroadhesion
- A-Pod Robot Hexapod Video
- Dancing DIY Hexapod Robot Video
- DreamROBO Climbing Robots
- KMR-M6 Hexapod Robot
- Robots Race Ahead - On Cockroach Legs
- Oh Great, Fence-Climbing Robots
- TITAN-III Spider Robot Is WAY Too Quick (Video)
- Oh Great (Part 2), Fence-Climbing Robots
| SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits |
| Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots |
| What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots? |
| SpiRobs Soft Spiral Robotic Arm |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
