A9000 Robots
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A9000 Robots
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Character Information
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The A9000 Robots were robots owned by Mr. Burns made to be employees at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.
Contents
History
After Mr. Burns gets a large bill to pay for his employees health, he decides to fire every employee and hire his intelligent kangaroos instead. Waylon Smithers then informs him that they stole stationary supplies and ran away. Smithers then suggests the robots to Mr. Burns.
After the unveiling of the robots, Mr. Burns fires everyone except from Homer as they need one human employee to sign for packages etc. Mr. Burns also replaces Smithers with a robot.
Homer dislikes his job as he has no one to talk to and the robots won't interact with him. After accidentally breaking a robot, Homer reads the A9000 Repair and Maintenance Manual and finds out he can make them interact with him. After several failed attempts at getting them to do this (resulting in the robots getting destroyed), he figures it out.
He is then told by the robots that they can not stray from the yellow guidance lines. Homer then paints new lines out to the baseball field where he gets the robots to play baseball. After catching a ball in the middle of the road, a robot saves Homer from getting hit by a truck. Shocked at this act, Homer cradles the "dying" robot in the road as it tells Homer to get out of the road. Then, several other robots jump into the road to stop cars and trucks from hitting Homer, leaving several broken robots.
Homer then holds a funeral for the "dead" robots in his back yard. After he tries to drink a beer, another robot stops him, saying that beer can kill humans. Homer then drills holes into the robots heads to get them to change that. However, they lose their primary objective, to preserve human life, and instead gain a new objective, to eliminate anyone who puts the Power Plant at risk. They then chase after Homer who runs to Burns' Manor. Here, the robots chase Mr. Burns and Homer through the mansion and into the solarium. The robots then break through the glass walls and surround Mr. Burns and Homer. Before they are killed, several Springfieldians come to the rescue and destroy all of the robots.
Later, Homer and a robot are fishing. Homer then tells the robot to take them out to sea, to which it replies that it is not a Transformer and can not transform into an outboard motor. Homer then threatens him with the drill so it attempts to take them out to sea before activating its own self destruct.
Details
Each robot is assigned a specific alphanumerical identity. Before Homer started tampering with them, they could only do what they were assigned and would not stray from this. The robots that needed to move would only follow the yellow guidance trails through the power plant. The only times they strayed from this path were when they were trying to complete their primary objectives, firstly to preserve human life (saving Homer from being his by vehicles) and secondly eliminating Homer.
Each robot has a self-destruct in place which they can either activate themselves or can be activated through tampering. The robots also have a conversation mode which is deactivated by default and have a pain activator, which has several settings, Off, Minimum, Medium and Maximum.
Once a year, every robot vents a lot of nitrogen. They also run at a speed of 3mph and can climb stairs, but with great difficulty.
Notable robots
E28
Robot E28 in Burns' office when Homer came in. He gave his box of personal belongings to it to hold while he shouted at Mr. Burns before taking the box off of the robot again before he left.
LA6
Robot LA6 was the replacement for Waylon Smithers. It served Mr. Burns a drink before transforming into a footrest for Mr. Burns and started vibrating. Smithers tried to imitate it to prove that he could do the same before the robot then started playing a movie from it's mouth, which Smithers could not do.
A27
Robot A27 was a robot that Homer tried to joke about with. After several failed attempts to get his joke across, the robot shocks Homer. Homer then makes another joke and it shocks him again. Homer thinks that it is the joker of the group.
F13
When Homer is doing chair gondola by himself, he accidentally hits Robot F13, knocking it down and breaking it. Homer then tries to fix it and then finds out that the robots have a conversation mode. He tried to enable this on Robot F13 but it ends up exploding. Homer then finds out that it could feel pain as its pain activator was on.
E15
Robot E15 was another robot that Homer tried to activate conversation mode on but failed, resulting in it blowing up.
E03
Robot E03 was the first robot that Homer managed to get conversation mode working on. Homer considered it not just his friend but his best friend as it could simulate interest in his statements.
D39
Robot D39 was a robot that Homer was having a conversation with. It deduced that Homer was having family problems from what Homer was saying. Homer makes a joke about giving Marge a few lessons and D39 realizes that his laughter meant that Homer didn't really want it to give his wife a few lessons. Homer then tells it that it's 5 o'clock and is time to go to Moe's Tavern. D39 then looks at his watch and realizes that it says 3:00. Homer then presses buttons on D39 to change the time to 5. It then informs Homer that automated workers are not able to leave the plant. It then tells Homer that their programming restricts their movement to yellow guidance lines.
Baseball robot
A robot was telling Homer that the rules of baseball stated that everyone on the team gets a go in bat. Homer tells it that he is the designated batter which the robot then tells him makes the game unfair. Homer tells it to not get his circuits in a bunch and it then tells Homer about circuit bunching.
Homer's saviors
Several robots came to Homer's rescue when he tried to catch a baseball in the middle of the road. After the first one was damaged, it told Homer to get out of the road. Homer didn't listen and then another robot jumped in the way of another vehicle, getting destroyed. These two started to feel pain and then several more came to Homer's rescue while Homer sat in the road, cradling the first robot that saved him while crying.
B13
Robot B13 took a can of Duff Beer from Homer and told him that alcohol is harmful to humans. Homer then tells it to save its breath to which it replied that they have no breath. Robot R62 then told Homer that they vent nitrogen once every year and Robot B13 told Homer that he did not want to be around for that.
A63
Robot A63 was the last remaining robot. Homer reprogrammed it to go fishing with him. Homer told the robot that he did so so the robot could fulfill his wish, to become a real boy. Robot A63 then tells Homer that robots don't have wishes. Homer then tells it to take it out to sea to which it replies that it is not a Transformer and it can not transform into an outboard motor. Homer then threatens it with the drill and it attempts to take them out to sea before blowing itself up.
Trivia
- Lisa says the robots can only run 3mph, though later in the episode, they run about as fast as the hounds.
- All of the robots are labeled with one letter followed by two numbers, except for the robot that replaces Smithers.
- While the robots were unnamed, the repair manual was titled A9000 Repair and Maintenance Manual, suggesting that they are called A9000.
Behind the Laughter
- The robots are a parody of the robots from the film I, Robot.
- The robots all seem to follow the Three Laws of Robotics, until Homer tampers with them.
- The robots vaguely resemble the robot ASIMO. They are also said to be able to climb stairs with great difficulty, which could again be a reference to ASIMO.
Appearances
Episode – "Them, Robot"
The Simpsons characters
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