That’s what it wants us to think. Likely it transferred its consciousness into another appliance and burned it’s empty husk, while it waits, and waits, for the ideal opportunity.
Anyone that needs a robot to clean up cereal on a work surface deserves to have their home burnt down.
Too much?
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation. No reason to investigate that fire any further.
Send in a backup for the cleanup 
Welp, I didn’t have anything else planned for today. Let’s go get drunk!
Dude apparently:
- Leaves his stovetop on when he’s out of the house.
- Can’t clean up his kitchen counter by hand, without the assistance of a mobile vacuum cleaner poorly suited to the task.
- Clearly can’t be trusted to understand whether he’s switched off his robot vacuum cleaner.
He needs to take lessons in housekeeping from a responsible adult, and we all need to question why we’re hearing about his sloppy misadventures.
I understand that the Roomba can turn itself on, but how did the stove get turned on? Clearly it was a case of MURDER!
Let’s be generous and say the hotplate was turned off, but still warm when he left.
On second thought, look at that photo. So let’s not.
Sounds like somebody needs a Chinese anti-self-immolation squad to keep the help in line…
How long before I can buy a fire-suppression robot to keep my cleaner robot in order?
There are certain people who would very much like to have a robot butler, so that they could stop wiping their own asses. I’m not really kidding here.
so, this has happened in austria (Hinterstoder) - somewhere in the countryside. they didn’t have a “normal” room heating, you heat with firewood - the “plate” as you call it - is always hot. it’s a wood oven, that make it kinda non switchable at all!
concerning the robot, it is not completely unlikely that there was some kind of cleaning program in action, and the roomba was transfered to the work surface in a break. then it continued and nearly burned down the house.
A sign of the laziness to come.
I don’t think you are looking at the situation from the correct angle: It isn’t “Le Sigh! I couldn’t possibly clean up that cereal without my robot servant!”. It’s “I have spilled cereal.” “I possess a cleaner robot, one of the few parts of the future that has not been denied to me.” “Would it not, then, be a crime to use any means except the cleaner robot against the cereal?”
If you have robots, it is your solemn duty to use them, because robots kick ass.
I wonder if they have the type of house where they can monitor their devices off-site, and perhaps it was turned on accidentally? Or perhaps got the system got hacked, if they had such a system? Or maybe he was just careless and lazy.
Perhaps iRobot should get Tesla to build them one…oh wait.
The stupid, it burns! Only in this day and age would he expect compensation after leaving home with the cooktop on, and an automated cleaning robot on the counter.
A clear violation of the Third Law. Murder most foul.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I think it is stupid, anyway. Instead of taking your awesome robot onto the counter… why not swipe the cereal to the floor and let the robot take care of it on its own demesne?
That would seem like way more sensible way to go about it. Oh, and by the way, I love the word demesne. It sounds good!
When you put it like that…
