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"It wasn't until I was past forty that it bacame clear that I was going to be quote, successful, unquote."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Delivery Robot | ||
| A small autonomous device that will bring goods directly to a person or place. |
| At first I thought that my
brother Clark had managed
one of his more charlatanous
machinations of malevolent
legerdemain. But fortunately
(the only fortunate thing
about the whole miserable
mess) I soon perceived that it
was impossible for him to be
in fact guilty no matter what
devious subversions roil his
id. Unless he has managed to
invent and build in secret a
time machine, which I misdoubt he would do if he could
. . .nor am I prepared to offer
odds that he can’t. Not since
the time he rewired the delivery robot so that it would
serve him midnight snacks
and charge them to my code
number without (so far as
anyone could ever prove) disturbing the company’s seal on
the control box.
We’ll never know how he did that one, because despite the fact that the company offered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would please tell them how he managed to beat their unbeatable seal — despite this, Clark just looked blank and would not talk. |
| From Podkayne of Mars,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Worlds of IF in 1962 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the dope mule robot from Heavy Weather (1994) by Bruce Sterling.
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- Quadruped Jueying Delivery Robot Brings Fresh Coffee
- Robot Food Delivery Coming To Campus Near You
| Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best |
| Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning |
| Robot Imagines Itself (Not The First Time This Has Happened) |
| Intelligent Trash Sorting By Robots Predicted Long Ago |
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