Wired picks the 50 best bots of all time

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.