Vote For 2012 Inductees Into The Robot Hall Of Fame

By David Wharton | Updated

Yes, there really is a Robot Hall of Fame. It’s an actual thing that actually exists. Quite frankly, that news alone would be enough for us to want to high-five whoever founded the thing, but no, the story doesn’t stop there. You see, the Robot Hall of Fame is currently allowing the public to cast their votes for which robots (fictional or real) should be the 2012 inductees. If nothing else, this sort of thing is bound to count in your favor after the robots take over the planet. Maybe you’ll get a cushy job like “supermodel sex-bot latex application engineer.”

In addition to several real-life robots, this year’s robot nominees include Pixar’s WALL-E, Rosie the maid-bot from The Jetsons, and Johnny 5 from the Short Circuit movies. I’m guessing they must be running out of ideas, because Rosie? Seriously? Where’s the love for Bishop or Roy Batty? They shouldn’t be discriminated against just because they look human or have some bioengineered components instead of wires and fuses. That’s un-American, dammit! I suggest you guys head over and vote so Johnny 5 doesn’t beat WALL-E and thus render the entire exercise a farce. You can cast your votes over at the RHoF website.

The Robot Hall of Fame was founded in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. Past inductees to the RHoF include Star Trek‘s Data, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, R2 and 3PO from Star Wars, and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It occurs to me that if Carnegie Mellon isn’t prominently advertising the fact that they run a Robot Hall of Fame on all their recruitment material, they’re not as smart as I would have given them credit for.