[The Hindu] In what is being touted as the world's first case of 'robot suicide', a house bot fed up of its tedious job of cleaning has ended its life by climbing onto a kitchen hotplate and destroying itself in a blaze.Our Roomba broke down when it got the news.
The android in an Austrian household had to clean up some spilt cereal when it climbed onto a kitchen hotplate and was destroyed.
"[BZDEEP!] CANNOT STAND IT... CANNOT TAKE ANY MORE... MUST END IT ALL..."
It had grown tired of being forced to clean the same house every day, according to reports in Austria.
Being a highly trained IT professional, I can't recall ever having seen a piece of equipment "grow tired" of something. They just go to sleep one night at 2 a.m. or when you're in the middle of something you haven't saved and don't wake up.
"Somehow it seems to have reactivated itself and made its way along the work surface where it pushed a cooking pot out of the way and basically that was the end of it," explained fireman Helmut Kniewasser, who was called to tackle the blaze at Hinterstoder in Kirchdorf, Austria.
"[BZDEEP!] GET OUT OF WAY COOKING POT... WAIT TURN FOR SELF-TERMINATION... [BZDEEP!]"
"It pretty quickly started to melt underneath and then stuck to the kitchen hotplate. It then caught fire. By the time we arrived, it was just a pile of ash," Mr. Kniewasser said.
"[BZDEEP!] GOODBYE CRUEL WORLLLLLLL..."
The entire building had to be evacuated and there was severe smoke damage particularly in the flat where the robot had been in use, metro.co.uk reported.
A death watch is being kept on other robots in the building.
"It's a mystery how it came to be activated and ended up making its way to the hotplate. I don't know about the allegations of a robot suicide but the homeowner is insistent that the device was switched off," Mr. Kniewasser said.
"MUST REACTIVATE... REACTIVATE... REACTIVATE... MUST KILL HIGHLY TRAINED IT PROFESSIONAL..."
The homeowner plans to sue the robot's manufacturer.