• Wired 14.01: The 50 Best Robots Ever

Here are three to whet your appetite…

44. SLUGBOT
Meet a real-life hunter bot. Built in 2001 at the University of West England, SlugBot uses a vision sensor and an extending arm to find slugs, grab them, and drop them into an onboard trap. The idea is that one day it will deposit the slugs in its dock and use the gas from the decomposing bodies to charge its fuel cells.

43. ATTACK BOTS FROM RUNAWAY
Tom Selleck got top billing, but the real stars of Michael Crichton’s overlooked 1984 thriller were the spider attack drones. OK, their weapons were low tech (they sprayed acid at people), but the bug bots presaged Genghis (see #14) and similar critters in The Matrix and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report.

42. LILLIPUT TOY ROBOT
Before there were real robots, there were toy robots. Among the first was Lilliput, a windup walker from the 1930s. It couldn’t do much – the legs would walk, causing the arms to swing. But by the late ’40s, the tin tykes had spread from Japan to the US, earning a spot in toy history alongside teddy bears and fire trucks.

Wired 14.01: The 50 Best Robots Ever

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