Disappointed Putin underwhelmed by killer robot

A new video of Russia's action man president Vladimir Putin shows the leader looking distinctly unimpressed by a demonstration of one of his lethal new robot soldiers.

The war machine's main boast is that it can accurately fire a pistol and ride a quadbike at the same time, while being operated by remote control from a safe distance.

"It looks more like a sci-fi movie," Putin is quoted as saying, and he's right - but unfortunately the team that built the robo-soldier delivered something closer to Star Wars' C-3-PO than the liquid metal killing machine, T-1000, of Terminator 2 fame.

Mediocre as it is though, the Advanced Research Foundation's angular android is less clunky than, say, the original Robocop's mechanical rival, the ED-209; but in all fairness the ED-209 was animated in stop-motion.

Putin obviously has a right to be nonplussed. After all, he bothers to make the trip out to the Central Scientific-Research Institute on the outskirts of Moscow in the bitter Russian snow only to be presented with something that looks like it was designed in 1984.

Meanwhile the US Department of Defense is developing mind-controlled drones, while Google now owns a veritable menagerie of terrifying animal robots, courtesy of its acquisition of Boston Dynamics.

With a thriving industry of psychic drones and nightmarish, Fahrenheit 451-style quadrupeds just the other side of the North Pacific, no wonder Putin's rankled.

Source: RT
Author: Nick Alexander. Approving editor: Martin Zavan