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Do these large-scale, human power-plant-tending robots from The Matrix movies have a name, in-universe or out?

Large scale robot creatures on stilts with large tops approach a skyscraper city in the distance... the scene is quite foggy

Source

A close up of the previous image but in colour, it also shows tentacle-like things climbing up the bottom of the city

This one (found with search engine) already has a Stack Exchange imgur ID

A close up of the same creatures moving through the landscape in the previous two images, the city is not visible

Source: Immaterial Labour and Data Harvesting; Facebook Algorithmic Factory (1) "Human fields from the Movie “matrix” (1999)"

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    Yup; they're all called Gary.
    – Paul D. Waite
    Feb 21, 2019 at 16:32

2 Answers 2

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These are 'Fetus Harvesters'.

Diagram of a Fetus Harvester, a large creature with a bulbous body and 5 legs ending in a spider-like feet. It also has a container like thing on the top of its body

Concept image from The Art of the Matrix

Interestingly, the name of these robots evolved quite considerably over time. In the earliest (1996) version of the script, they're referred to as "farm-like reapers".

[Huge farm-like reapers are harvesting the crop]

The 1997 script treatment has a slight edit, referring to them as "a thresher-like farm machine[s]".

The husk hanging from a stalk is plucked by a thresher-like farm machine.

By the final draft, as seen in The Art of the Matrix, they're given the name "Fetus Harvesters". Geof Darrow also provided a set of concept drawings (see above) that survived largely intact to the final film.

We rise up, the field stretching in every direction to the horizon, lightning tearing open the sky as a harvester sweeps past us.

and they make an appearance (by name) in the Matrix Webcomic A Sword of a Different Color.

The Fetus Harvesters roam the same landscape as shown in the question with the city not visible in the background. A quote box is highlighted reading: His vile dragons, the ones he talked endlessly about, the ones he vowed to defeat... they were the Fetus Harvesters!

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    These are really great, thank you! This is what made me think of them.
    – uhoh
    Feb 22, 2019 at 0:41
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    @uhoh - Glad you liked it. Any day I've got an excuse to get my 'Art of the Matrix' book out is a good day ;-)
    – Valorum
    Feb 22, 2019 at 9:26
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Did a Google search "human pod harvester the matrix movies"

The Matrix Wiki says they're just called "Harvesters". I can't imagine the machines giving them a specific name and humans would call them what they were.

Harvesters (or Fetus Harvesters) are Machines that maintain the expansive fetus fields of synthetically grown human fetuses used to populate the power plant as older humans die off or are ejected from the power plant.

The Matrix Wiki, Harvester

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    I thought the pod harvesters were the small, mobile ones that "pulled the plugs" on spent bodies. The ones I'm showing here are 10-20x larger.
    – uhoh
    Feb 21, 2019 at 15:07
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    I've edited in the link I think you are referring to and some context from it in case it goes down.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Feb 21, 2019 at 15:11
  • Oh I see what you mean, yes, that could end up being what they're called. Thanks!
    – uhoh
    Feb 21, 2019 at 15:13

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