Following a flurry of reports that a Pentagon contractor’s foraging robotic platform would be feasting on the corpses of slain soldiers, the company in question Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. has issued a press release hoping to clear up the matter.
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population,” Cyclone’s CEO said in what must be the most bizarre comment in a press release ever, assuring that the platform was an attempt to “create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter.” The killer robots will, according to the press release, be strict vegetarians.
It does not appear clear from the company’s previous documents regarding to product why the killbots should be unable to consume flesh, let alone human flesh, and indeed the limitation may be purely for the sake of public relations. It has a legal aspect too, as the Geneva Conventions ban the desecration of the dead during time of war. Presumably consumption by a kill-mad battle droid would count as “desecration.”
Given that recent US wars have been fought in barren deserts and urban cityspaces, it seems difficult to imagine that the robots will find plentiful plant matter to consume.
