NOPE: DARPA's Hovering Robotic Drone With Claw Arm

Seen here about to inappropriately touch a stepladder, DARPA's autonomous V-bat drone hovers while showing off its 6-foot robotic arm. Wonderful, now they're going to start stealing our claw machine prizes. At least leave some for the kids.

Officially, there's an innocuous reason for the giant arm: a stereo vision system, in tandem with GPS, lets the robot precisely deliver one-pound payloads with the kind of reach that us fleshy anthropods wouldn't have. We're not quite so comforted after realizing that the robot can find its target without human input, however. DARPA sees the V-Bat as a stepping stone towards more autonomous vehicles, and it likely has noble intentions at heart.

Pfft, "Likely has noble intentions at heart." Yeah right. This is DARPA (of robotic cheetah, Big Dog and creepy humanoid fame) we're talking about. Do you even know what DARPA stands for? Death Army of Robots Pounding Ass. *running duct tape up crack* Not this ass you don't.

Hit the jump for a brief video.

Thanks to Icarus, Mungo9000 and Phil, who agree DARPA has gone too far and must be stopped. Unless saying that will get the government to show up at our doorsteps in which case none of us ever said that (except Phil -- go after him).

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