If that's the best cover story they could come up with, maybe we really do need to start spending more money on defense.
Bat Bots began as a "casual conversation" between a few unnamed engineering professors, presumably the sort with last names like "Depravicus," "Von Nefarios," or "Musk." They believed an airborne robot with the characteristics of a screeching, rabies-riddled cave rodent "could do a better and safer job getting into disaster sites and scoping out construction zones than bulky drones with spinning rotors." The government's response to these "professors" was somehow not a trip to Super-Prison, but a $1.5 million grant. And so we wound up with this new nightmare:
These things would be great at swooping into disaster sites -- just huge swarms of semi-transparent robo-bat skeletons, screeching and dive-bombing the wounded to provide ... comfort? It's unclear how, exactly, a Bat Bot would be preferable to a non-Halloween-themed drone in these scenarios. But don't worry, this will all make more sense when they unveil the next version, which spends its downtime dangling upside down. Because that was the part that disconcerted us: It's not hanging upside down. Not lurking above our heads, in the shadows of dark ledges. We hated that part. Thanks for fixing it.
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