It seems humans aren’t the only primates susceptible to a robot take-over.  More and more humanoid robots are appearing in marketing campaigns en lieu of chimpanzees, orangutans, and other cute and hilarious simians.  It makes sense; humanoid robots pull the same instinctual heartstrings as our hairy cousins, without the somewhat off-putting reality of animal welfare issues.  One might also be reminded of the fact that robots and chimps are capable of horribly disfiguring us, though at least robots only do so accidentally (for now).

Hardees (aka Carl’s Jr., an American fast food joint) has come up with the next great tv commercial to star a robot, similar in tone to this one from Logitech.  And they’ve gone the extra mile to include a small behind-the-scenes featurette to show how they brought the robot character to life.  Besides advertising their new chicken sandwich, the ad asserts that machines shouldn’t have anything to do with food production since machines don’t have to eat it.  This seems a bit disingenuous, though, given the amount of automation in modern chicken processing.

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[source: Hardees @ YouTube] via [Geekologie]