The Red Shiny Robots of Vortis are mostly a parody of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Borg, with a bit of Cylon and Dalek. A race eager to absorb information and knowledge of various races, exterminating them in the process. They appear to be clad in red latex, they extract the minds of the lifeforms into the "data-sphere" which leaves the bodies dead, although it has the weakness of disruption if those who are having their minds "harvested" think of falsehoods (allusion to the Star Fleet attempt to plant an optical illusion computational worm in the Borg collective in the 'I, Borg' episode).
There is also a model of Red Shiny Robot of Vortis used for infiltration, designed to look like attractive women (reference to Cylons in the reboot series). Although based on the episode, it's debatable whether they truly understand the concept of attractive.