Got $10? As in, less than the cost of dinner at Chevy’s? Or what you’d pay for two beers at a dive bar, that you wouldn’t even remember…

Spend it on your very own robot portrait – that you keep.

Ben Rollman of http://robotportrait.blogspot.com/, will make you a really nice hand painted color painting of the robot of your dreams. Ten measly bucks, and it’s good art! Even better, Ben videotapes the making of the piece, and then posts it to youtube. So you can watch him draw it. And within a week of ordering, the original shows up on your doorstep!

We got three done just for fun:

Robot Vulture

Sammy Twelve Switch

King of the Robots

I love the interwebs.

It’s the original music video sung by the original boy band. And yes, the star is in fact a cyborg. So it is applicable to SuicideBots.

I wouldn’t click the link if I were you.

Erm… He’s only doing that so he can replace the pencil with pen.

For permanency.

Right?

Dancing Robots! Dancing robots you say? We *love* dancing robots! ABC-TV has a little video on their site that shows off these nifty machines:

Who could the sickeningly intelligent people behind this scheme be?

Why, it’s none other than The Orb Swarm!

The Head Rotor and the rest of the team have been up to their eyeballs in wire and plasma cutting getting the orblets ready. Give them love.

Teehee.

It started a normal evening, the building emptied of faculty and graduate students at sundown leaving a handful of us undergraduates slaving away coding in C. All sense of normalcy began to fade when I heard strange sounds coming from the Personal Robotics Group space. I tip-toed towards Professor Breazeal’s lab, avoiding any illumination from the 21″ LCD monitors that were too busy churning out simulation data to notice the disturbance. I finally found an observation post by the drinking fountain.

From WaziWazi.com

Oishii!!!!!

Courtesy Wired NextFest, here is a completely adorable video of Keepon the dancing robot boogeying his way through Tokyo.

Beware: Hot Gothic Lolitas, Japanese Vending Machines, and Robot Dance Offs.

[Thanks Karen!]

We wonder if Natalie Jeremijenko has extended her love of cyber dogs to the insect world. . .

Pollution-seeking miniature leaping robot debuted:

A small robot capable of leaping like a flea to cover vast areas of ground was debuted which sniffs out pollution. The insect-like robot was developed to detect mercury poisoning in the ground and leaps from place to place the way fleas or frogs jump.

This cute little bugger was developed in Italy by the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna’s biomimetics program.

[via The Raw Feed]

Kawada’s HRP-2 (aka Promet) has been programmed to reproduce dance steps with the practiced grace of an electronic geisha.

So far the 128-pound (58-kilogram) dancebot has been taught the fluid motions of the Aizu-Bandaisan—a traditional Japanese folk dance—as well as more mundane tasks such as serving tea, carrying a table, and standing up from a prone position.

OK – now it should be noted, that I am the most jaded American roboticist I know. Been there, done that, flown half way ’round the world to see it, too.

The following video is the single coolest thing I’ve seen in robotic movement. Ever.

Better than Asimo.
Way better than Qrio.
And yes, even better than the micro-electronic hand that could grab the tobiko egg.

Watch this video and be awed.

I think Promet ought to call out Asimo to some seedy back alley in Shinjuku (filled with indigent tour-bots and broken down vacuums) and bitch slap him.

Of course, Lem knew about it ten months ago.

Capital-S Science has developed a Flexible Battery:

They’re even using your favorite Sci-Fi technology and mine, carbon nanotubes!

The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes, the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.

We here have future visions of various robots sitting around, watching Terminator, snacking on tasty flexible battery chips. . .

[Hvala, Sci-Fi tech!]

the arm bone’s connected to the, shoulder bone…

Mr. Robotics’ favorite game in the whole world is winning at “oh, you can too get toys from a claw machine.” The RoboBunker proves this with hundreds of plushies won from claws. But now, nirvana has reared it’s pretty head:

The robots come from MechaTrax, a Japanese android company.

This is Nissan’s new line of cars: Dualis. Out this year.

Uh huh.

Well, we’ve dropped some hints before, but here, folks, comes Chassis. Chassis is a fully mobile remote beverage dispensing unit. Chassis will fill your glass from the spigot on his front, provided you flirt with or bribe him. (Chassis is thus unlike certain Momcorp products where the alcohol goes the other direction).

He (Chassis is unmistakably a “he”) is looking a little rough after decades without a touch-up; he has an appointment with a powder coater tomorrow. He’ll come back a nice shade of red. We’ll get some video up soonish.

Thanks to Jamar for the use of his photo apparatus!