Cannibots (Update: Not So Much)

My title isn't exactly correct for this article, since these battlebots won't be feeding off of each other, but instead human and animal carcasses.

While it's a neat idea to make use of carrion and corpses as a fuel source, I'll go out on a limb and predict that these will almost immediately be misused. Problems with international law and regulations saying one must house, feed, and give trials to wounded prisoners? Just send a bunch of these robots in with convenient "bugs" that accidentally let these bots feed on the still living. Don't want to sacrifice low-level personnel to torture inmates? Just let a cannibot into a room full of restrained prisoners and see how fast someone talks once the first guy gets slowly consumed. Added bonus: they can be mass produced and they're great for domestic crowd control too.

Update (7/22/09): The bot's manufacturer strongly disputes the Fox News report, saying that the bots only process plant matter like twigs, grass, and wood chips. They further state that, since desecration of the dead is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, they would not consider that as a potential fuel source. Fox News for its part has now retracted the story liked above; the link now goes to a stub saying that the bots are strictly vegan and pointing to a corrected story.

Since they make no pretense of defending their original sensationalistic story, this appears to be a major mistake on the part of Fox News and on my part for uncritically accepting their story.