Because it seems like it’s becoming a recurring theme around the RoBunker, we submit for your approval ALL OF THE HAMSTER ROBOTS WE COULD FIND!*

Who knew there would be so many. . .[twitch]

The ever-popular iRobot Hamsterbot!

Make yer own hamsterbot!

Danish hamsterbot!

Hamster Clock!

Emotion-grabbing Kismet like Hamsterbot!

A teenty weeny hamsterbot thread on Slashdot!

For the knitting types (and the furries too, I guess) Squishy Robot Hamster!!!

This. Is. So. Wrong.

Even more wrong than the wrong thing that was wrong above this one (NSFW, unless you work in my kitchen).

Hampy The Hamster-lovin’ chatterbot!

Rumors of another AI Hamster from Bruce Eisner!

*This post may look like a link dump, but we actually had to do RESEARCH!
RESEARCH I TELL YOU!**

**Not really

Some reader needs to find this and send us a roll for Christmas. You can wrap in a sheet from another roll…

Little Aibo might want to put this on first. Waterproof Week at SB continues with this wetsuit for our favorite robopet.

Is it a robot? Probably not.

But I want one.

From The Secret Life of Lobsters

These enormous devices, built by Avure Technologies, are called hydrostatic pressure processing (HPP) systems. They come in several models. The entrepreneur mentioned in my article, John Hathaway of Shucks Maine Lobster, is the proud owner of the Avure 215L — which weighs 80,000 pounds and is 16 feet tall.

The HPP technology was initially developed by the U.S. Army to make better-tasting MREs (”meals ready to eat”) for the troops. The science of it is relatively simple. If a piece of food is immersed in water, and the water is then squeezed to high enough pressure, pathogens and bacteria will be neutralized, but the food will be otherwise unaffected.

You press the start button on an Avure machine. Powerful pumps whir, and inside a narrow tube in the center of the machine, the water pressure is compressed to several times the pressure found in the deepest trenches in the ocean. The microscopic bugs in your meal all die, giving the food extended shelf life, and reducing the need for artificial preservatives.

At the same time, all the muscle flesh inside the lobsters conveniently separates from the shell. For the first time in human history, people have finally devised way to extract the meat of a lobster without cooking it.

When the lobsters come out of the Avure machine after a minute or two, the result is arresting. Every piece of meat can easily be extracted from the shell, raw and fully intact, including the leg muscles.

As a friend of mine put it: It’s a crustacean without the crust.

That’s so five minutes ago.

robot soldier from laputa - castle in the sky

How could I NOT post this one?

Wonder if they’ll jump or not…

As a follow-up to the Photo Of The Day yesterday, the ever-prescient Magnus over at Shifz Blog mentions a situation that looks wholly sensible on the surface but goes completely WTF when one thinks about it:

Suicidebots blog made me aware of a Richard Vaughan’s initiative “No Evil Robots” - which basically sounds like a good thing, as the point seems to be to stand up against military-funded development of autonomous killer-appliances … But somehow, I think the slogan “Prevent evil robots from taking over the world:
Just say no to robot weapons and violent robot competitions.” goes a little bit too far.

(more…)

Go party machine, go.

Welly, welly, well well.

Looks like the ComBots Cup will be returning as part of the 2007 O’Reilly Maker Faire this May 19-20th in San Mateo. Remember Battlebots and RobotWars? Well, the ComBots Cup has all the excitement with none of the fluffer fluffy vapid announcer chicks.

If you’ve never seen ComBots up close, the fights are 100 times better in person than they are on TV. There’s a good article about the last event at Robot Magazine.

And if you’ve ever thought about building a robot and competing, how does $6000 sound? That’s the top prize in the 220 lb/100kg class. 2nd place get’s 3k and 3rd gets a grand. Oh, and you get to display the amazing ComBots Cup trophy for 6 months (in the photo above, to the right of last year’s winners Matt and Wendy Maxham.)

Register here. You’ve got 4 months. It’s a blast to compete for the world’s top prize in combat robotics, even if you don’t win. The action that happens in the pits, the comraderie between builders, the fun of fighting… It’s better than NASCAR.

Full Disclosure: I co-own ComBots LLC with Missy SuicideBot. But what are blogs for if you can’t self-promote?

Not exactly clear why it’s doing the Gene Kelley bit, but it’s cool that it’s waterproof.

We predict that future robots will be clever enough to bring an umbrella.

No evil Robots.

This means you, Tandy.

Hey Kids,

No, this post is not about robots per se, but it is about people who like robots and the people who like people who like robots (I am loathe to use the word “Community”, it give me hives, you know what I mean).

After Friday’s devastating storms and tornadoes in and around Deland, Florida, we were noticing the jarring absence of our good friend and compulsive commenter, Suicidebots Regular #42, Radioactive Jam.


Pix courtesy Floridiana

Luckily, after a bit of poking around, we found out that Mr. and Mrs. Jam are all right, having experienced nothing more serious than a bummer of a commute and a bit of wet weather:

As much as I’d like to see the Suicide Bots Action Force mobilized (if nothing else just to see what happens when…) I cannot tell a lie: no tornadic effects in our immediate vicinity. All the bad stuff happened several miles to the south of us; we’re among the fortunate.

Hard, hard times for many people, though. Friends of friends among the fatalities. And while one local official’s remarks seemed kind of stupid - “this tornado had no conscience” or something similar - the indiscriminate nature of… well, nature… is sobering.

This is a PSA to say that if you have some spare paypal cash lying around, give to the Red Cross or Burners Without Borders or some other disaster relief situation or group that makes you happy. You or your family might need them someday in case you ever become a statistic.

Yeah, it’s a small disaster compared to things like hurricane Katrina and genocide in Sudan and everything, but you never know what might happen next and who it may affect.

Okay, maybe some of you aren’t so into the squishy meat puppet sentimentality thing, so I will come at you from another angle:

Radioactive Jam is one of my biggest sticker customers.

So if nothing else, give to disaster relief so he’ll keep Suicidebots.com in business.

I think it’s a line follower. Or something.