The Thermonator: Man’s flamethrowing, robotic, best friend finally available to average man

Finally, man’s best friend gets an upgrade! I’ve already told my wife this is at the top of my list for christmas- and birthday presents! A bluetooth-controlled robot dog that can shoot a 10m long fire jet – The Thermonator.

About The Thermonator

Take the Boston Dynamics’ robot dog and put a flamethrower on its back and you’ve got the Thermonator. It weighs in at only 17 kilos and about 80x50x50 cm in size, which is in par with a small, to medium-sized normal dog. The Thermonator also has both WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities to allow for flamethrowing wherever and whenever, from the comforts of your home.

For the £7,600 one could ask for slightly better battery time imo. if you want to reliably use it for extended periods of time, e.g. in a stand-off against your neighbor or anyone else annoying you, one hour is simply not enough!

Throwflame market it as “Ready for anything” and makes five suggestion on use cases for the the dogg-o, ranging from wildfire control and prevention to snow and ice removal to entertainment and SFX.

He’s also a very good boy.

Wider implications

As cool as it would be to own ones own fire-throwing robot dog, it does raise some questions about where this is heading. The markets for AI-controlled and AI-enhanced tools and gadgets are currently exploding, and it’ll probably only increase in the coming years. A lot of these things are becoming more and more accessible on the open source arena, with LLMs performing almost as well as the closed source options currently.

In the Ukraine conflict AI-controlled drones have allegedly already been used to some extent. Add to that The Thermonator and you’ve got yourself a serious escalation of a conflict. I don’t really see any means of getting back to battlefields without AI and drones; they’re simply too powerful.

Are we sleepwalking into our own demise with these weapons?

2024-04-25 11:30