Farmer forced to sell robots

Beijing farmer Wu Yulu must sell some of his stunning hand-built robots to pay off debt incurred when one of his projects burned down his house. The bots--some capable of "serving tea and lighting cigarettes"--are constructed from material scavenged from junkyards and farm equipment. So far, he has sold two robots, one to a collector and the other to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of them, named "Wu Laowu," went for US$3750. From People's Daily Online (Image snip from Reuters/China Daily) :

"I couldn't sleep well for several days after selling the child, but I had no other choice. I had to pay off my debts," said Wu, 44, a farmer from Mawu village in eastern Beijing...

"I loved to play with robots. The cleverer they became, the deeper the emotional link I felt to them. Later, I began to call them my sons..."

Last month, Wu made the headlines again for a new invention, a robot able to pull a rickshaw one step every three or four seconds.

Sitting in the rickshaw, Wu said he has no plans to start a robot business.

"I can invent robots able to carry a sedan chair, and next I will make robots of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.

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