“MMMMM … BACON ….”

We’re all doomed, doomed, I tell you.

Robots think we taste like bacon.

Researchers at NEC System Technologies and Mie University have designed a robot that can taste — an electromechanical sommelier able to identify dozens of different wines, cheeses and hors d’oeuvres.

[…] When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

So, faced with robots being able to identify us as temptingly tasty food, what do we humans do? Start giving them machine guns.

South Korea on Thursday unveiled an armed guard robot that it says can be used to detect and suppress intruders along the heavily fortified border between South and North Korea.

The Commerce Ministry said the robot, which can fire a machine gun or rubber bullets and sound an alarm when it detects suspicious movement, could dramatically improve surveillance capability.

The robot also can distinguish people from moving objects such as a vehicles from up to 1.2 miles away in the daytime, and half that distance at night, the ministry said in a news release.

Jeez … it’s like a bad science fiction movie. Or an episode of The Simpsons. At least the bacon-loving, machine gun-toting robots will start eating humanity over in Asia first …

(via collision detection)