The sexy pixelpushers over at Diesel Sweeties have made us twitch with amusement yet again:

[Sent from the bountiful rss reader of Laughing Squid, yay!]

FiGHT!

[Thanks SeanBonner!]

. . .Just says “Chipper-Shredder” to me.

We love the Japanese.

[Thanks Eggshell Robotics!]

I was digging around on Instructables when I found this neato link submitted a while ago for Society Of Robots. It’s a bunch of tutorials, advice, and places to satisfy your DIY robot needs.

They also have some good advice about funding.

Their FAQ strums my heartstrings because We here in the RoBunker suddenly have an intense feeling of not being the only people who get asked these very same questions all. the. time.

So go check them out, give some good advice on the Robot Forums, and be gentle to the noobs, you were one once too even if you have blocked the memory out.

In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

I am fully in favor of all of President Executron’s policies.

A few flashlights, a rubbish bin: presto. Robots and light sabers. Cool stuff from LICHTFAKTOR.

I just got a couple of videos anonymousishly IMed to me as a part of the Great CarNAYgie Mellon Conspiracy. Daniel H. Wilson, the “mild mannered” humorist and author of How To Survive A Robot Uprising is uses his perverse powers of reverse psychology to make us think he’s on the side of the humans. Hah. Tis video shows us differently by trying to lull us into a false sense of security.

Yes, it’s Keepon, the infamous, adorable, squishy, slightly testicular robot that is actually much more complex than one would think (even Mr. Robotics, jaded fuck that he is, admitted this). Don’t let Keepon’s cuteness fool you. He’ll be just as much a part of the revolution as Skynet.

Daniel Wilson is also shilling for his alma mater CarNAYgie Mellon with this spiffy splash page that shows of his videos and the work of the lovely Ali Spagnola, whom we have previously covered.

I almost went to CarNAYgie Mellon once. I wanted to move to Pittsburgh and be a Penguins fan. Alas, it was not to be, I only made it into H&SS and not engineering or drama. Bastards.

So this is all over the place now, but I am spreading the joy of a Kuka-powered trebuchet to you, our extremely bored readers. See the beauty. Watch the innovation. Get all sweaty and hot about Science.

The disclaimer is the really awesome part.

If you’ll remember, that particular Kuka model also has been known to drop phat beats and scrizzatch them mad rhymes.

[via Botjunkie via Hackaday via Manapotions]

This is *so* going on my permanent record.

My Robot Friend and I will be smoking in the girl’s room if you need us.

In a slight departure from our regular format down here in the RoBunker, everybody give a big hand for the Number Of The Day, Number 107!

[Audience claps]

There are 107 pages of robot-themed handmade art on Etsy.com Some of it is toothachingly cute.

Episode #107 of MST3K was called “Robot Monster”

The online teevee show “Cute With Chris” also has Episode Number 107, entitled “Robot Cat”:

“Non-human animals should never be inhabaitants of the Uncanny Valley.” says Mr. Robotics. I would concur. This particular robot cat is just. . .creepy.

Chris Hancock of MIT published a paper for IEEE (of which both The Rotor and Mr. Robotics are members) entitled “Toward a Unified Paradigm for Constructing and Understanding Robot Processes“. It’s actually pretty good read, and guess what page of the IEEE 2002 Symposium on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments book it’s in? Thaaat’s right, Page 107!

And the kicker:

Robot brains evolve at roughly 107 times the rate of humans. So said Hans Moravec of the the Dana Foundation, way back in 2001, a momentous date.

Since we’re going to be relegated to subservient status by the awesome intellect of the forthcoming robot technologies, we may as well occupy our time doing silly time sucking activities.

Like searching for the correlation between randomly chosen numbers and the word “Robot” on Google.

I really should get out more.

The brilliant conglomerate down at Evil Mad Scientist Labs (well actually this one was Lenore’s) has exceeded my wildest expectations.

Okay, maybe the expectations were not wild per se. Maybe I just have an unruly fondness for snails.

And zinfandel. Right now anyway. Ahem. Moving on.

Lenore calls it the Escargobot. Get it? Get it? ‘Cause it’s a robot and it’s a snail and. . .never mind.

Here is another confession: I have two goldfish bowls filled with baby snails in my kitchen right now. It was an accident (the condom broke) but they are just the CUTEST lil things. . .if anyone wants a baby Mystery snail, lemme know before Mr. Robotics breaks out the garlic and butter.

Bill and Mark Sherman are prolific bot builders who we are lucky enough to have compete at RoboGames.

They just sent me their latest project, a Wind Harp in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had never heard of a wind harp before, it’s a neat concept. They keep tweaking theirs with things like solar powered preamps and are thinking of experimenting with multiples strings and pickups.

Everything looks like it came from Home Depot or Radio Shack, which is my favorite sort of project!

Aside from being a cool project, the Wind Harp is really, really nice to listen to, especially if you need a bit of relaxation background noise.

It’s intentional/accidental cutting-edge ambient music. They should have a bin for this at Amoeba (actually, they probably do).

Listen to his shoutcast here.

Botronics is also a finalist for the 2008 Instructables and Universal Laser Cutter Contest! We wish them all sorts of luck, and also pity them for the number of calls they are going to get from friends asking to use their new laser cutter.

At last, the Metroccolis Inventors of Mechanical Evolution have finally perfected the ultimate breakthrough in personal robotics. Your Personal Robot is on sale right now, today, for normal household use. Your Personal Robot makes the everyday tasks of life just that much easier. Your Personal Robot is safe, sanitary, and effective for all your robot-oriented needs. Your Personal Robot will clean your house. Your Personal Robot will do your homework. Your Personal Robot will love you when your friends do not.

This unprecedented research has been going on since 1996, proving once again that science is sexy, and you would totally buy it a drink if you were cool enough.

(I must confess to a small piece of my history here: I went to circus school. I am a clown by birth and training. Your Personal Robot must be cool, because I am posting it against my very genetics. Having said that, I will say this to my brethren: WARNING: Mimes.)

. . .to give you all a heads- up about an event happening in mere short weeks in San Francisco: The official premiere of the Doggie Diner Head Trip, a documentary film by Truth Serum and Central Services productions!

It is a gorgeous documentary chronicling a cross-country odyssey through the highways and byways of America, trailing the Holy Trinity Of The Dogminican Order. It is notable for capturing a vanishing era in American History: the institution of the roadside attraction and the freedom for freaks to sit in Piggly Wiggly parking lots for hours and hours and not be arrested.

Here’s the trailer:

The whole shebang begins at 2pm on Saturday, January 26th at Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda, California. There will be performers from near and far, live show by the Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, and we;ll probably figure out a way to get into a lot of trouble before the day is out, because we get bored.

Why is this interesting to SB readers? Well first of all: bicycles perverted for a noble purpose. That’s reasonably technical. Also: This documentary was produced by our dear friends Johnny Law and Fletcher Fleudujeon, and Mr. Robotics and I traveled across country in the bus for the documentary.

We spent quality time broken down in notable Autozone parking lots across the nation, I fought sleep deprivation and aliens driving the chase vehicle across New Mexico in the dead of night, hoping the truckers would see me before they hit the bus (which didn’t have hazard lights and did a top speed of 45 mph on a downslope with a tailwind). Mr. Robotics wore that stupid wig, and kept kicking $tephen Ra$pa in the head while he was sleeping, and there was a haircut given with razor-sharp nail scissors in a moving vehicle while we evaded the cops.

You just won’t see this in the film.

See what you could get away pre-9/11 in a San-Francisco-Values-loaded 1947 Gillig school bus (RIP Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby). Come on down and say you were there when, this sort of thing just doesn’t happen much anymore, people.

This is great. Some folks built a filter bot to detect stupid comments.

Q: Isn’t filtering stupidity elitist?
A: Yes. Yes, it is. That’s sort of the whole point.

Q:Won’t people just try to defeat the filter, the way spammers try to get around spam filtering?
A: We certainly hope they will — that implies they’re no longer generating text statistically likely to be stupid.

We hopes version 2.0 can has flamethrower

Concentrated Stupid: Here’s a random stupid comment detected by the method. Keep clicking for concentrated supidity, LOLZ ROTFLMAO!!