WATCH: Our robot overlords will excel at ping-pong

This ad from Omron Automation & Safety intends to make advanced automation seem fun, but the execution makes it seem like your future will depend on whether you win your sudden death table tennis match with a robotic version of the Aliens xenomorph.

Set to bland corporate needle drop (certainly tagged as "uplifting" in the track library) opponent after opponent enters through the room's only door to find nothing but a ping pong table and their foe, an unbeatable 10-foot robot with no remorse or pity, taking on young and old alike as an ominous narrator intones "Machines can do much more to unleash human potential… pure possibility."

What happens to the humans when they lose? Are they used as fuel for the ping pong robot? Or are they used as fuel for the robot that makes more ping pong robots?

I'm just funnin'. Omron's stuff looks pretty cool. And I can't wait till they make the ping pong version of Big Blue that can beat professional players and other ping-pong robots.

Omron Industrial Automation

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