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EXPERIMENTAL MILITARY ROBOT MALFUNCTIONS, KILLS 1

Tuscon, AZ (GBN) - A robot being designed to infiltrate enemy territory and rescue hostages malfunctioned in a mechatronics research laboratory outside of Tuscon, AZ Friday, resulting in one death and 3 serious injuries amongst millions of dollars of destroyed equipment.

The complex militaristic automatron has been dubbed “DesRes,” an amalgamation of its purpose of Destroying enemy forces and Rescuing friendly hostages, apparently malfunctioned during a weapons test trial. Initially the robot stalled and froze during the trial, but after several technicians went to revive the machine, the robot was jolted into an automated, aggressive mode of operation, and then fired its weapons upon one of the technicians. The other 3 were injured by debris but a manual override was able to shut off the robot before any more casualties were inflicted. But when the machine was taken into a repair center, it malfunctioned once more and destroyed several integral pieces of equipment.

At the moment, 200 DesRes robotic machines have been constructed and are being held under safe guard in Nevada. The total cost of the DesRes project has amounted to over $3 billion dollars since it initially received funding in 2001. However, the malfunction of the model on Friday could mean that much more money could be spent investigating the cause of the accident and making the proper repairs. This would set the Mechatonics and Robotics Research Institute back a large sum of money, potentially even jeapordizing the interest.

Furthermore, the lackluster demonstration failed to impress the Japanese investors, which may cause even more problems when trying to sell the machines.

However, the DesRes is still planned for launch this coming September and approximately half of the robots will be made available to local police authorities in major metropolitan cities across America, barring any more significant malfunctions.  But an engineer that worked on the robot claims that there is “nothing to worry about,” and insists that the DesRes malfunction has been an isolated incident.

“Nobody could have predicted the malfunction. It was simply a bizarre phenomena and the problem is being investigated.”

Another 200 DesRes machines are planned for completion by the end of 2008.

POSTED 16:39:09 BEN BOLDMAN NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK