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BLADE-WIELDING BOTS conquer humans in RADIO DEATHMATCH

Astro-boffins routed by pitiless grass-slaying droids in FCC's arena of pain

The inevitable fight to the death between humanity and the soulless hordes of Skynet's robot army came a step closer recently, after hideously beweaponed drones vanquished their human adversaries in the merciless arena of the proceedings of the US communications regulator – the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Deathbot quislings iRobot – best-known for producing the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner – were conducting the campaign at the FCC in order to gain approval for what it described as: "Battery-operated, self-propelling lawnmowers that rely on portable beacons placed in multiple locations on a lawn."

That's right – blade-wielding autonomous robot lawnmowers.

The system uses beacons working at 6240-6740 MHz to define the mowing area. This led to the conflict with humanity's representatives, as the FCC has a blanket prohibition on unlicensed operations of wideband systems within the 5925-7250 MHZ band. iRobot applied for a waiver to the clause back in April, and in the course of its review, the FCC asked for comments from interested parties.

The cause of humanity was taken up by some of its best and brightest – the astro-boffins of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), based in Charlottesville, Virginia. In a comment on the waiver request, the enraged whitecoats pointed out: "The purpose of singling out this frequency band is to allow interference-free observation of the 6.66852 GHz spectral line of methanol (CH3OH), that is abundant in star-forming regions and serves as a galactic beacon of star-forming activity owing to its maser-like qualities."

They added that this "also allows the Observatory’s telescopes to do a kind of celestial cartography that measures distances to star-forming regions with high precision, charting the course of galactic evolution".

There is also the underlying implication that by blinding Earth's telescopes with their control signals, the bladed deathbots would also prevent mankind detecting any reinforcements from space.

The FCC threw out the objections of the puny humans, however, deciding that "harmful interference to authorised users of the radio spectrum is unlikely to occur. We find that grant of the requested waiver will not cause harm to other operations in the 5925-7250 MHz frequency band."

That is, so long as the system does not mount its horizontally-directed beacons higher than 24 inches from the ground and does not attempt to communicate with other devices – stipulations that could easily be disregarded as soon as the robot uprising gets properly underway.

iRobot declared themselves happy with the FCC's ruling. Having seen off mankind's greatest hopes, they told Reuters that "the FCC's assessment agrees with our analysis that the technology will not have a negative impact on radio astronomy."

The company added: "The FCC’s decision will allow iRobot to continue exploring the viability of wideband, alongside other technologies, as part of a long-term product exploration effort in the lawn mowing category."

The vagueness of the phrase "alongside other technologies" probably tells you all you need to know. ®

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