I went to CES in Las Vegas a month ago, and the robots are getting bigger, more useful, and ultimately more terrifying. A human who weighs 200lbs is designed with 2 legs to push all that meat around. People often can't do pull-ups, and can't curl, press or extend heavy weights.

A robot that weighs 400lbs is moving that much weight around. They are being built to carry heavy loads, exert superhuman force, and be as efficient as possible with their leverage.

And once you see them walk around, carry things, play ping-pong, or any of the other tasks that robots do at CES to impress onlookers, it gets scary as fuck. They will be able to exert so much force, it would make the Terminator look like a chump.

The silly answer to threatening robots is that the ones aimed at consumers all have big bobble-heads, expressive eyes, and no arms to speak of. They want to make Amazon Echo with a head and a face, but no ability to massacre a household.

This is all a little morbid and off my usual VR topics, but I've seen a Boston Dynamics dog robot in person, and at CES I saw an 18' tall riding mech for some "Mech Racing League" TV show. These things are being built, but any idea that clever humans will beat them or knock them over is naive. They are ALL built to get up when they fall over, and thanks to machine learning, they simulate ways to avoid falling over billions upon billions of times until their "brains" can adapt instantly.

It will take a lot of wisdom...and well placed fear...to avoid having dangerous robots and drones become part of daily life. I definitely recommend heading to CES next year, because each year things get bigger more sci-fi.