
So we nearly suffered a life-threatening paper cut
in our rush to tear open Wired's January issue (or 14.01 in Wired-math) after we peeped good old
Albert Hubo on the cover as posterboy for a story on "The 50
Best Bots Ever." While we disagree with Wired's methodology (we think including movie bots was a cop-out; HAL is
little more than a freakin' lightbulb, guys), the list nonetheless gave us all sorts of happy memories, from playing
with Optimus Prime and friends to watching
AIBO fetch his pink
ball over and over again to purposely spilling stuff on the floor just so we could watch our
Roomba in action. The title of Top Bot, unsurprisingly, goes to one
of the most sophisticated autonomous machines of all time, Stanford's
DARPA challenge-winning VW Toureg named
Stanley. Most conspicuous omission? Apparently Wired's got no love for a little fellow we know as
Johnny Five.