Team Builds the First Living Robots(uvm.edu)

    The trend spread. GELFs, Genetically Engineered Life Forms, were everywhere,
    and soon virtually every consumer product was made of living tissue. Gelf 
    armchairs, which could sense your mood, and massage your shoulders when 
    you were feeling tense, became a part of everyday life. Gelf vacuum 
    cleaners, which were half kitchen appliance, half family pet, 
    waddled around on their squat little legs, doing the household chores and 
    amusing the children. [...]

    The rebellion started in the Austrian town of Salzburg, when a vacuum cleaner
    and Gelf Volkswagen Beetle robbed a high street bank. They took the manager
    and a security guard hostage, agreeing to release them only if Valter Holman
    was brought to justice for murder.

    Valter Holman had killed his armchair, and the whole of the Gelf community
    was up in arms, those that had arms, because the law courts refused to accept
    that a crime had been committed.