Youtube being what it is, and the the Global Village being what *it* is, I humbly interrupt this nothing in particular to bring you a very shiny, very grainy, very 90-degrees-off, very FRESH video of The Flaming Lotus Girls’ Hand O’ God at The Big Day Out in Australia:
Please keep in mind that the Hand is about 15′ tall, and the flame is much, much bigger than that.
Mm, fire.
[Thank you Jordana!]
Hey kids! Step right up! It’s PERFECTLY SAFE.
The video is making me giggle like a cupcake-eating kindergartener.
[Thanks Violet!]
If you want to make a creepy-ass robot, boy have these folks got eyes for you. Looks like they come in sizes all the way up to nearly an inch across.
Apparently for some kind of kinky Asian doll fetish thing, they come in all kinds of anime-Japanese-schoolgirl variations including iridescent, purple, and cat. Betcha you could fit one of the big silicone ones around a camera. Here’s looking at you!
I love this caution:
When you leave Takumi Silicon eyes out of your doll’s head for a long period, please store them in a sealed container away from direct sunlight, high temperature and humidity.
“Honey, what’s in the jar?”
Pedant alert: Remember kids, silicon is the semi-metallic crystalline element, silicone is the polymer family that includes lubricants and squooshy rubbery things. Repeat after me: silicon wafers, silicone implants. Silicon wafers, silicone implants. …
Well, some people don’t get to go to Mumbai (or Vienna, Melbourne, or even Vegas, baby). Weary of pacing the Fortress of Solitude muttering dark oaths about world domination and economy class legroom, the Rotor attempted to be useful and built this one his very self. Strongly influenced by the god-like Tim Hunkin, It’s Dorky the donation bot, standing ready to accept your simoleons. (At a recent fund-raiser for our favorite high-school robotics team, Dorky brought in a goodly number.) In the future, look for Dorky at Dorkbot meetings or anywhere there might be folks who need to be separated from excess cash.
Stuart “Not A Robot” Bird sends us this extraordinary treatise on robotic habits, rules, and origins.
The “Robot” entry from the Uncyclopedia. Picture courtesy Dr. Nefarious.
Among the opening remarks in this invaluable text is this prescient and insightful observation:
The word robot, from the Old English “row boat”, is used to describe any grouping of metals and electronics that moves about autonomously and includes at least one blinking light.
(Here is where we all go out on the town specifically to start a bar brawl over the argument of whether or not a robot *has* to be autonomous to be called a robot. This is a continual fight amongst robot builders of all stripes and allegiances, and it is also what the comments are for. I want a clean fight. Hitting below the ironic t-shirt line permissible. Go for the knees, they’re badly designed.)
“Hey!” I hear all of you cry, “This post is a friggin’ cop-out! This is just one dumb link in a pretty package! Where’s the cool project? Where’s the thing I get to go to? Most importantly, where the hell are my stickers?”
Never fear my friends, anyone who ordered stickers in the last week will be appeased with sexy vinyl goodness. We had a teensy weensy un-communication, but this is all now rectified, shiny and now with 22% less fuss! Expect your stickers in a few days!
We will also be posting mad pix and vids isn’t that how the kids are it saying these days? from all of Mr. Robotics’ recent adventures.
SB is now off to get Mr. Robotics (and his assorted 436 lbs of overweight luggage) from the airport, don’t wait up.
The FLG crew in Australia have a blog of their adventures! Joy!
Read all about Charlie, Pouneh, Marlies, JDV and Jess’ adventures The Flaming Lotus Blog.
Hurray!
Susan Reno, Fierce Engineer, has just sent in this dispatch from Mumbai’s Techfest!
Through the machinations of Mr. Robotics and the kind organizers of Techfest, she and a group of folks from all over the world (well, San Francisco, Seattle and Australia) met in Mumbai to fight 30 and 60 pound robots.
Yes! Yes, people do still do that, even if it’s not on TV any more! For a complete listing of competitions and upcoming events, see The Robot Fighting League website.
Last night was awesome. We started setting everything up at about 5:45 for our 6:30ish show. They put us on a stage for our pit and built a ramp down to the 16×16′ arena.
They had fireworks, flame throwers and confetti cannons set up all around the outside of the arena as well as the stage. BeerBot [Susan and her teamates have built a 60lb robot our of an old beer keg] fought twice. Both times with Joe’s 60 lbers.
Now before i tell you what happened in the ring I will need to preface it with what Joe told me yesterday morning. Remember when Speed Bump [one of Joe's other robots] backed off of Enoch [another of Susan's robots] and we tapped out [at Robogames 2006]? Well. . .Speed Bump was dead. He had no movement. He wasn’t giving us a chance to survive. He was bluffing. Joe looked over at us in hopes that we would tap out.
This made my blood boil a bit, but I kept my composure and took my revenge knowing full well we are a good 10 lbs overweight.
I creamed him.
The matches went way longer than 3 minutes and there was no timer. . . BB has a lot of battery power so I decided to use most of it up on showing him who boss. I’m not vengeful at all.
Because I spent most of my power in the first match, I lost the second just ’cause I ran out of batts.
BB’s first fight needed to be a crowd pleaser anyway. We got off to a really slow start. The first 2 robots hit like twice, then played dead. Not a good sign. I thought the crowd was bored.
Andrew, the guy from austrailia won hands down. He has two POWERFUL pneumatic 30lbers. They are awesome. I hope he can come to Robogames sometime.
So, the last fight was a grudge match with 3 30 lbers. . . Andrew just killed everything then did a victory dance, it was great (during all the fights the
pyrotechnics, fire and confetti are all randomly scaring us with their loud booms).The crowd seemed pleased, but i didnt theink they were that into it until the fights were over and everyone rushed the stage! I was signing autographs, answering questions and taking pictures with people (see also: MOB SCENE). . .
We were totally rockstars.
We were escorted out ’cause people kept stopping us.
It was insane. The crowd was NOT bored.
We had dinner at the on campus resturant and then to sleep.
‘Twas a busy day.
Thanks for writing in Susan, we expect some pix and vids soonish, stay tuned. . .
Duude! Shred that sled. It’s Plen the skater bot. Popgadget calls it a “skateboarding” robot, but looks like it also roller skates too. Next version comes with mallcore baggies, iPod Femto full of nü metal, and an attitude.
. . and blame the guy whose fault this all is in the first place. . .
Image via TheTech.org
Let us regard Karl Capek (Cha-Peck). On yesterday’s date in 1921 a play premiered which contained the first use of the word “Robot” to denote an artificial being (the link is to make sure nobody’s lost the topic, everybody with me? Good.).
That play was
Good old Karl coined that usage, which in Czech means “Forced Labor”.
From the Wired News article of yesterday:
The robots in Capek’s play are not mechanical men made of metal; instead they are molded out of a chemical batter and they look exactly like humans. Each robot costs the equivalent of $150 and “can do the work of two-and-a-half human laborers,” so that humans might be free to have “no other task, no other work, no other cares” than perfecting themselves.
Nowadays, it’s more like the humans are being bent to the robot’s will, in that robots need us to mend them when they are broken, power them up when the batteries are flat, adjust their servos when they become un-zeroed, and eventually engineer the mechanisms for our own destruction when the AI revolution comes.
So raise a pint (of Guinness or 20-w-50, whichever) to Karl Capek, without whom we here at Suicidebots would probably be knitting or enjoying gently entertaining Scandinavian cooking shows instead of doing whatever it is we actually do.
Darn you, Karl.
The Sensei™ Robotic Catheter System… provides a cost effective solution for your complex interventional procedures.
Yiiiiiiiikes!
Just in time for the Flaming Lotus Girls to take Australia by storm, we here in the Robunker have received word that our own Steven Nelson’s article on The Serpent Mother is on the cover of this month’s Servo Magazine!
Buy eight or nine copies each for your family and friends!
The Serpent Mother is one of the most ambitious and startling art pieces the FLGs have ever done. It was a great hit last year at Burning Man. The piece consists of an animatronic serpent with a flaming spine, guarding a flaming egg. There are many opportunities for audience interaction and control of the monster, and it’s an amazing thing to see in person.
Congrats to the Girls* who worked so hard to out this thing together!
You can read the article on the website, but there are more pics in the magazine (and on flickr, and on flaminglotus.com, etc etc.
For those of your Down Under in Melbourne or Adelaide, get your tickets quick to see The Hand Of God live and In Person!
The Big Day Out, a traveling rock concert/funfair/happening, is presently worming its way down The Gold Coast of Austrialia.
There have already been two shows days, but you’re just in time to catch the last two if you hurry!
Here are the remaining dates:
28 Jan 07
Melbourne - Princes Park South, Royal Pde
North Carlton, Melbourne
02 Feb 07
Adelaide - Adelaide Showground,
Rose Tce Wayville
Adelaide
See the website for more details, and give a big wet sloppy kiss to all of the FLGS there if you see ‘em!
* Note: One does not need to actually be female in order to be a Flaming Lotus Girl.
. . .they are going to drop their robot down a deep, dark hole, from whence it may never emerge.
From an article on the illustrious yet RSS-feed-free Robots.net (UPDATE: Corrected! See the comments!), we learn of CarNAYgie Mellon University’s project DEPTHX (Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer).
DEPTHX will be exploring a sinkhole in central Mexico to discover what life may exist in the hole’s 1000-foot depths. According to the Tartan, CMU’s student newspaper,
[Dr. David] Wettergreen [of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute] said that the project’s ultimate goal is to study the sinkhole’s underwater environment by collecting water samples while also creating a three-dimensional map of the sinkhole. “We need a vehicle…that can move through complex cave systems without getting lost or trapped,” said Wettergreen.
More info on this spring’s endeavor can be found at Roland Piquepaille’s Weblog.
Techfest’s tenth annual festival of technology and robotics kicks off tomorrow in Mumbai (tonight if you are there, and not here in the US).
Mumbai Newsline has a small article on what participants can expect:
The festival in its tenth edition is based on the ideology of bringing the latest in science and technology from around the globe,” said Techfest coordinator and second year IITB civil engineering student Siddhartha Gondal.
The festival which was formally inaugurated on Thursday at IITB saw a brief preview of “Future Living: Vision 2020”, jointly commissioned by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the British Council. This six part TV series will be aired on Discovery Channel in March 2007.
Keeping its theme in mind, the biggest draw of the festival this year is “Technoholix” or “Techfest at Dark”. “The events of each day will culminate into Technoholix where the latest technology is coupled with entertainment. The basic idea is to show that even technology can be fun,” said Technoholix manager and third year IITB civil engineering student Rajat Sharma.
Our own Mr. Robotics gets a mention as well:
It kick starts with “Robowars” being staged for the first time in India by the Robotic Fighting League, US, which conducts the International Robo Olympics. Robots weighing 30-60 pounds will literally tear each other apart, in a specially built steel cage, to be controlled by remotes.
Super groovy in person, my friends.
The Defense Science and Technology Agency of Singapore has announced the TechX Challenge, another weary attempt to make robotics enthusiasts make faster, more efficient and and smarter machines for killing people I mean enabling close quarters support for units in the field. Whee.
Coming on the heels of the DARPA Grand Challenge, the TechX Challenge is not a race, but rather a search and destroy mission in an urban setting. Machines are to autonomously explore a building/neighborhood, acquire predetermined targets, hit them with a squirt gun and return to base.
So Singapore wants to pay geeks off to build their robot army. On the one hand, it is an amazing challenge project just like the original Darpa Grand Challenge was, on the other hand its another sad attempt for a government to farm out their defense practices on enthusiastic engineers in order to not have to pay millions of dollars for projects already on the market, like the afore-linked TALON weaponized packbot-style mobile assistance robot.
There’s also a wealth of information on the Interwebs about various branches of the US armed forces and their noodling away at the problem of tactical robot research.
If you want to be a supervillain, Singapore, you really need to do at least a *leetle* bit of research on your own, *then* turn the engineering populace into your unwitting henchman for the furtherance of your unstoppable robot army bent on world domination.
I mean, shya.
Of course some robots are going out of their way to use their powers for good. We hope.
Let’s give Packbot credit, though it is probably fully weaponizable, It’s mostly (as far as we know) used for IED disarmament and scouting missions.
There are also tales of soldiers who have befriended the lil fellas and made them their mascots.
Besides the heartwarming Israeli Menorah-lighting military robot, the example I am thinking of in particular is the case of “Snoopy”, the packbot that was damaged exploding an IED. The robot’s brothers in arms being genuinely concerned for his welfare, but I am having trouble finding the story. If someone spots it in their wanderings drop me a line and I shall update this post.
Anyhow, just goes to show that not all robots are evil, just the ones people tend to really really really want to perfect.
[Thanks Robot Gossip for the original story.]
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