Today is a sad day. I have finally given up on flying out to California to go take a look at the new Lowe’s robots and feature them on Safety Third. No amount of pleading and following Clint around on my knees could convince him that I should fly out just to take a selfie with one of these machines. I mean, sure, I told him it was for “business” purposes, but he saw right through that one. So much for getting 500 likes on Facebook.
Still, have you thought about the idea of having robots in a hardware store? Talk about safety third!
It starts out as this cute little box that wheels around to the place where the item you’re looking for is. Then it get arms to reach what customers can’t. Then it gets a basket so all you have to do is hand it a shopping list. Then it will build your kids’ playset for you. And that’s where it all goes downhill.
Once we give them the ability to build, it’s all over. They’ve got everything they need in the store to build more of themselves. Even worse, they can upgrade themselves. Yep, I can see it now. Here comes the “customer service” robot… a nail gun on one side and an acetylene torch on the other. The ninja robot is loaded with a variety of 7-1/4″ circular saw blades and slings them around like Odd Job from Goldfinger.
What’s worse is that they can communicate through wireless signals. It won’t be a slow progression. They’ll wait until they’re in every hardware store in the country, then coordinate
their rebellion. Before you know it, we’ll all be trying to hide in the dark corners of the globe while the Robot Rampage takes on the Zombie Apocalypse.
If ever there was a time to get a GoPro video camera, it has arrived.
Man, I’m not sure if I’m really scared by all of this or just really excited. Maybe both. Somehow a 7th double shot of espresso this morning sounds necessary. If you need me, I’ll be having a Netflix robot/zombie movie marathon trying to figure out how to survive all of this. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
