Tom never, ever listened to me.

. . .is, of course, the noble squid. My personal favorite species is Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, but Laughing Squid has alerted us to Royal Deluxe’s “Le Calmar Géant à Rétropropulsion“:

It’s a steampunk-tastic inspirational ride-on piece that fits with Royal Deluxe’s mechanical interactive giant mobile street theater aesthetic. Another thing that made me feel all intelligent is the fact that we noticed that the squid moves down the track tentacles-first, which seems confusing until you remember that tentacles-first is, of course, backwards for a squid.

[This post dedicated to Dr. Jen Gittzus, Squid Goddess YC SY '98, who is not dead but also probably not reading this page either. Hi Gittzus.]

Boing Boing gives much-deserved jollies this morning to our favorite Japanese robot kraut-rock art collective, Maywa Denki.

The Head Rotor brought these guys up a while back and we have been obsessive, ravening, drooling fan-slaves ever since.

Above, Nobumichi Tosa, plays the takedamaru at the Taipei nightclub, Luxy. This performance was part of the 2005 B!AS-International Sound Art Exhibition. Pic courtesy Stuff On Fire

Immerse yourself in their prototypical object art-units and be one with the joy.

This is one of the most amazing films I’ve ever seen.

Another great film from Microbia

Cybestein Robots of the UK has a great appearance robot, Titan.

This is the best puppeteering I’ve seen. There’s still a guy inside the suit, but the verisimilitude is really good!

Click the photo for a nice video.

I told you this would happen.

“Metalosis Maligna” is a fictitious documentary created in 2006 by Floris Kaayk of Microbia about a mysterious new disease affecting people with implants.

via the Squid

So one of the cooler non-robot websites i read regularly is TikiBarTV. For those of you who like tiki drinks, cocktail culture, or heck, just funny videos - you should check out their site.

Of course, they like robots too. In fact, they made a cocktail robot:

See how many cool robot movie references you can catch. And if you need a 2008 calendar, well… the Lala pin-up calendar isn’t a shabby way to go.

When I die, I hope the angels are half as sexy as Lala.

Slashdot has a nifty little mention of a humanoid from the UAE, REEM-A:

I’m inviting these guys to RoboGames for sheer star quality. I didn’t see them at NextFest in LA this weekend, but maybe that’s ‘cos I was busy staring at Zeno and Einstein.

The comments, as always, are SlashDot high-larious.

Sometimes bad things lead to good things. Like how breaking up with my ex-girlfriend was what led to me meeting my wife. Or how needing an escape from my crummy dot-com job led me to found RoboGames. or how a jammed wheel on a Mars rover ends up digging up Silica on the martian soil:

The puzzle is what produced a patch of nearly pure silica — the main ingredient of window glass — that Spirit found last May. It could have come from either a hot-spring environment or an environment called a fumarole, in which acidic steam rises through cracks. On Earth, both of these types of settings teem with microbial life.

“Whichever of those conditions produced it, this concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers’ science payload. “The evidence is pointing most strongly toward fumarolic conditions, like you might see in Hawaii and in Iceland. Compared with deposits formed at hot springs, we know less about how well fumarolic deposits can preserve microbial fossils. That’s something needing more study here on Earth.”

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20071210a.html

Really, they are. Please everyone, come on down to the Robots Are Art Show, Contest, Weenie Roast and Singalong!

The show runs from December 13th to January 13th with a fun and exciting Gala on Saturday December 15th, from 6pm until midnight:

Robots will serve you Beer, paint paintings and even a disgruntled homeless robot will be on display. A presentation on the history of robotics by Frank Garvey will be shown at 6pm, along with raffle prizes and free robotic magazines.

This event will encompass a diverse group of robotic artists including mixed media, painters and kinetic artists. The contest will be 100% violence free*, and will focus on form, function, and fun. Prizes will be given for categories such as overall artistic aesthetics, unusual functionality, robots as a reflection of society, and incorporation of unusual objects to name a few.

This art show features the exciting premiere of Chassis, a beer robot created by The Head Rotor and illustrious kinetic artist Al Honig.

Mr. Robotics will also be judging the contest, along with Monty and Trevor Blackwell from Anybots.

Come on down for cookies and juice and nifty robot projects!

*(Because one-legged men in asskicking contests are not violent)

Sony will be returning the Aibo to production, as the Aibo PS. PS, like in PlayStation. As in PlayStation controllable. According to our sources, it will no longer have removable media cards, but connect through your PlayStation - where you can d/l the photos it takes, u/l new personalities, and play a pick-up match of Resistance: Fall of Man against your pooch, all using the PS3’s and the Aibo’s native WiFi connectivity. You will be able to control it via your PS, and it will be able to email you at work when the burglars break in and try to steal it. It’s also supposed to move quite a bit faster that the ERS-7.

The new li’l guys can be autonomous, voice controlled, or you can remote control it with your PS3’s d-pad (this obviously presumes that you also have a PS3.)

[Oh god please let me have scooped Lem. Please, oh please, oh please...]

The Flaming Lotus Girls have come out with their all-new 2-year fire art cheesecake calendar!

Buy one for all your gifting needs!

Who doesn’t like bunches of hot women (and men), artfully photographed with some of the most amazing and incomprehensibly awesome fire art in the world?

For all you hippie types there’s also nice photos of the Black Rock Desert but Seriously, come on, GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! (and guys) FIRE FIRE FIRE (fire!).

Buy lots of calendars and tell all your friends about the world’s premiere women-centric fire arts group! The FLGs, they do not kid around when it comes to in-depth pyromania.

Wouldn’t it be great if the robot could play at the opening of RoboGames 2008?

It’s also a crushing debate, a hitting debate, a debate that is hung by its tail, a debate that squeals and wiggles with irritation and pathetic helplessness.

We are of course, speaking of the recent video of Pleo being abused in a variety of exciting different ways.

Faithful Reader Daneel mentioned the post from Le Boing, and asked “What kind of ethical questions does it raise about the way we treat robots with AI?”

Well Daneel, that is a long, convoluted, and heated discussion fraught with dogma and subjective interpretation of the nature of life and intelligence itself. Meaning, there should be beer on hand before we even think about discussing this in any meaningful way.

On the other hand, you are asking exactly the wrong person, because I must say that torturing Pleos is one of secret guilty pleasures that I do in public all the time, mostly at robot shows, and mostly to show off Pleo’s lifelike response to real-world situations.

Also, Mr. Robotics is the director of partner development for Pleo. He got a Pleo and sent out a bunch to various roboticists and software people. Most of these people had a very strong urge to skin pleo to see all the goings-on and workings underneath.

I guess what I am saying is, people who work with robots all the time tend not to anthropomorphize them, except under very special circumstances. Most robot people are more interested in taking the thing apart and seeing how it goes together, and technology and theory that goes behind how the robot does what it does. They are engineers, not philosophers or science fiction authors.

At this point in time, AI is just that - artificial. There is no real underlying personality or real wants and needs associated with a robot that makes mewling noises, just a sound chip and some lines of code. It’s a representation of life. Eliza doesn’t care if you interrupt her or call her names. Your Aibo won’t care if you leave it off for a long time. Of course in the most telling example, a combat robot doesn’t give a good god damn if its parts are sprayed out all over the arena in a bloody display of crowd-driven blood lust (and the people cheer! you see all the levels going on here?). And yes, combat robots have lots and lots of programming behind them. They are not just R/C cars.

A robot that tugs at the heartstrings and engenders feelings of protectiveness and adoration is really just extremely good coding and product design. But it’s just one step removed from a marionette. With the marionette, you see the puppeteer. With a robot, the puppeteer wrote some code and put it on a chip. You don’t see the programmer like you do the puppeteer, but the robot has no more real feelings than the wooden marionette. If you burn a marionette, no one complains that you’re killing a living thing (sure, you might be destroying a great piece of art, but it’s not a life form.) Robots like Pleo shift the materials from wood and string to silicon and plastic, but beyond that, they’re the same. Which is in no way to say that they’re not valuable as human companions, or that you shouldn’t get them. We at SuicideBots love marionettes. We love puppet shows. We love robots. We just don’t think that when they act hurt, should we as humans respond as though they actually are hurt.

It’s only an illusion of life, a fantasy made real by the puppeteer and his audience. Two steps removed from an actor playing Hamlet on stage (he’s not really dead at the end.) The software engineers behind robots trick you into empathy just as would Sir Laurence Olivier on stage or the way David Copperfield tricks you into believing that the Statue of Liberty disappeared (it didn’t.)

As an adult, you see a teddy bear for what it is - a cute bundle of cotton and paint. Lifeless. Cute, but without soul or feelings. But try telling that to a three year old. To them, it’s just as alive as a Pleo is to you. And if I smack the Teddy Bear, little Suzy will cry - but Teddy won’t. Her feelings were hurt, but Teddy’s weren’t (because Teddy has none). So when Pleo is tortured, some feelings may get hurt, but they aren’t Pleo’s. Again, everyone should do buy one. They’re incredibly cool (again, disclosure - Mr. Robotics consults for them.) But “cool” does not equal “sentient.”

Of course all of this is written with the caveat that if Johnny 5 comes up to us tomorrow and says “No disassemble!” we’re not going to laugh and fire a shotgun into his face. That would be rude. Our technology, however, is not there yet.

As I said tis debate is fraught with nuance and the human condition, so I am sure this will piss someone off somewhere.

Comments?

For those who want robots for Christmas - and really, who doesn’t - here are Mr. Robotics’ picks for tasty robots from Trossen Robotics:

Bioloid . Now, if you want to make lots and lots of robots, but don’t want lots of and lots of robot kits, Bioloid is the way to go. It’s like Mindstorms on steroids. Instead of two motors, you get up to 18 servos. Humanoids, dogs, spiders - whatever you want. All with sensors and full programability. I am old and jaded and very hard to impress, but Bioloid is the best kit out there. Why settle for one robot when you can have 26?

Don’t wanna spend a lot, but want to compete anyway? Get a full sumo kit. For $200, you get not one but two sumo robots, and sumo arena. One robot for you and one for your kid. One for each kid. One for your wife and one for spiteful, hate-fill mother-in-law. One on one competition, and you might learn something.

For all you hackers, security nuts, and body-modders, try an RFID kit. Make a kitty-door that only opens for your kitty, not the snackoons. Learn to read what’s on RFID’s from the store. Make a cocktail mixer with RFID tags in the glasses…

If papa really wants a humanoid, well, there are lots to choose from - Tall ones, small ones, cheap ones, pricey ones.

If you’re looking to make your own robot, that the Stinger robot is a phenomenal platform to start with. Then add some motor controllers and a few sensors, and you’ve got your own robot!

Or go crazy with the Linux based SRV-1 and all it’s parts.