. . .the Uncanny Valley, that is.

Meet Eva. She’s the creation of robotics designer David Hanson.

Hanson is best known for his work with KAIST (the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology) the people who brought you the KHR-1 bipedal robot kung fu artist [digression: I ask you, is there any better phrase that "Robot Kung Fu"? We didn't think so either].

Hanson is also known for the eerily awesome Philip K. Dick Conversational Android, and now, Eva. Eva takes you on a screaming fast road trip through the Uncanny Valley and doesn’t even let you stop to pee.

Take a look at this demo Hanson did at the Exploratorium a while back:

Three cheers will make her smile, but will probably make small children cry.

The Rotor is tickled to learn that they still make the classic Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. And no marketing genius has tried to “update” it with gratuitous movie tie-ins. (Coming soon: Rock-Em-Sock-Em Extreme Edition with Exploding Head Action!) Let’s leave that stuff to the amateurs: time for a rock-em sock-em mash up. Mr. Potatohead? Bring it on! Artoo, you’re going DOWN.

(Last image courtesy of Battlebricks, the Lego combot site, them’s that brought you the video bowling robot of a few links ago. R2 above came from the graveyard.

Rick send us this precious gem in a sea of inanity, from that fine, fine publication, Cracked Magazine:

Click above to read the rest. . .

Hacked Gadgets bring us Christopher Conte‘s sublime robotic art.

Pieces include spider armatures, bisected, terminator-style skulls, and the jaw-dropping, techno-lust-inducing, rocket-propelling Unmanned Attack Helicopter.

Goth conversation pieces at their finest. This site is worth it for the photography alone.

From Techyum, Violet Blue‘s awesome new technology and gadget website:

Hamster. Paper. Shredder.

[via Gizmodo!]

but we’ve got the smallest robots of all!

we have found a robot so teeny, i cannot capitalize anything in this post.

meet pico!

yes my friends, that’s a DIME.

trossen robotics has a happy little video showing pico going through its paces.

pico was built by the fine tinkerers over at poor robot. poor robot is also working on a variety of other projects on their attractively minimalistic site, go check em out!

This one’s a little late in the game but boy do I have links. . .

From Discovery:
“Tufts University biologists and engineers have launched an initiative to build robots with pliable parts — from the body down to the electronic components and wiring.”

More from Tufts Engineering, Science A GoGo, and a business blog which has info about the funders of this shindig, The Keck Foundation.

Tufts also has a Robotics Academy for teachers and schools in the Tufts area. Coolish, because everyone can get into robots, and robots can be taught to everyone!

Seriously. I once had a very good friend tell me that he didn’t know algebra, he was just trying to find out the value of this thing by using two other things he already knew.

But he definitely didn’t know a *thing* about algebra. . .

The Rotor here has been a little lax on the up-post, sorry. Currently — and that’s a pun, ha ha — his head is aspin with visions of orb swarms in the desert. They will look like this:

And they are robots, made from plasma-cut stainless steel. An internal motor/counterweight system allows them to roll and steer without wheels. They will flock and dance, make odd otherworldly sounds and at night glow in spectral colors. The Head Rotor thinks this is about the coolest thing on the dry lake bed, and he’s right now up to his roller bearings in H-bridge schematics and various motor control arcana to make them go. The people who run that foolishness in the desert seem to agree, and have even rewarded us with a little robot juice so we can build them. More news as it occurs!

Which we were, really, here is exciting news from Phil Torrone at MakeBlog:

IRobot announced a new bot today, a pool bot!

The iRobot Verro 300 is designed for use on gunite or concrete and features a powerful hydro-jet system that power washes the pool, deep cleaning pores, cracks and seams. The iRobot Verro 600 is ideal for vinyl, tile and fiberglass pool surfaces and features sturdy PVA brushes that scrub and clean the pool, while the powerful vacuum and self-contained filtration system picks up and traps debris and microscopic bacteria.

MakeBlog also mentioned something about ROV hacks, but why skimp? Make that sucker autonomous, THEN come see us, Phil, you cute little MakeBlogger you.

Yes, I said Robot Chicken.

No, not THAT Robot Chicken, THESE ones:

From Mobilemag.com:

Fitting somewhere between Tamagotchi virtual pets and a real puppy is the next-generation robot chicken from Sega. The little robots are fuzzy, cuddly, and unbearably cute, especially when paired with a bunch of children gently petting them.

There is nothing SB likes better than things that are made strictly for the fact that they are cute.

Thank you, Sega Japan. . .

[Apologies for the lack of posting. SB will be taking her beating with her tea.]

UPDATE: Robot Chicken Available For Purchase OMGWTFASAPLOL!!111!1!!111

The Navy Times reports that University of Idaho research engineers are developing autonomous subs that can talk to each other:

If that ain’t cute enough, the engineers have indulged in some Nerd Pride:

“We named the computer boards from characters in Star Trek,” researcher Thomas Bean said. “The command board we call Capt. Kirk. The board that controls the motor we call Scotty, and the communications board is Lt. Uhura.”

There’s also some nice distributed information research as the central aim of this project:

“Our research is aimed at getting the vehicles to collaborate and cooperate, to work together and communicate what they find, so if we lose one, we won’t lose the information we have on board.”

SB must confess that one of things that originally got her into robots in general (and marine disasters in particular, but that’s another blog) was the use of sweet-ass ROV technology for the 1985 discovery of the Titanic by Robert Ballard’s team and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Who says oceanography can’t be sex-ay?

Lowering Argo

Argo and Jason were the machines that did the grunt work of scanning the sea floor for wreckage. The Titanic was a big girl, but over 150 square miles in the North Atlantic, big girls tend to get lost. The original research vessel, Le Suroit, originally missed the Titanic’s wreckage by just 300 yards. Enter Argo, WHOI’s video-equipped deep-water ROV. With Argo’s help and a dedicated cross-national team of researchers, they found the ship and took fabulous pictures.

More good about this little Titanic tangent here and here.

For those of you interested in developing your very own communicating AUVs, the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE) in Monterey, California, hosts an annual series of ROV competition for middle and high-school aged kids. They are super fun for one and all, and this year SB and Mr. Robotics are slated to help with judging and troubleshooting mechanical failure!

The Monterey regional competition is on April 14th, 2007 on the campus of Monterey Peninsula college. Come on down and see what school-age kids can do with a camera and some air-filled PVC pipe!

This is so wrong it’s righteous. These folks made a Lego robot that swings their Wii controller, bowling a perfect game.


There’s something quintessentially hackerish about spending time on an elegant solution to a pretty much non-existent problem. (Well, as elegant as anything made of Legos can be.)

Tip o’ the hubcap to Liz and wiihaveaproblem.com

No, not the artificial Michael Jackson (how can anyone tell?), or even Kevin Warwick, it’s a “real” artificial sphincter. Though there’s certainly more than one awful joke there, I bet people who need it think it’s pretty cool. Follow this link for the product and this one for the snarky comments. Despite the date, this is the real deal, babes. Fooled ya!