So, we here who put on RoboGames were standing around shooting the breeze with our good pals at Lagunitas Brewing the other day.

“Gosh,” we said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get together a bunch of neat people and drink beer and talk about robots?”

“Yeah!”, said Jimmy J, General Organization Guy and Pony Ride Attendant up at Lagunitas, “It would also be cool to have a backyard barbecue with robot people, robots, and big lumps of tasty goodness to wash all that beer and conversation down with!”

“Golly,” said Mister Robotics, “It would sure be neat to do all that *and* have it be a fundraiser for RoboGames 2009!”

“Wow!” Said Ron, Lagunitas Sales Honcho, “I’ll bet that if we package up a fun afternoon of beer-becuing, robots, music and nifty surprises, and had it all up here in our super spiffy beer-tasting loft overlooking the Lagunitas Brewery, we could get a ton of people out here and get people excited about RoboGames 2009 at the same time!”

“My God Man!” we said, pouring ourselves another fine Imperial Stout, “You beer guys are Geniuses! That’s what we’ll do! We’ll invite a ton of people up to beautiful Petaluma, ply them with food, drinks, free tickets to RoboGames and other robotic delights, and let them know that their ticket money goes to helping put on a stunning show of technological wizardry and sportsmanlike excitement! The RoboGames!”

And so it was thought up, an so it shall be done:

The RoboGames Lagunitas Beer Party!
A Fundraiser for The International RoboGames 2009
Saturday, May 16th, 2009 – 4:20-8:00pm
$50/ticket gets you:

• All you can eat BBQ (dude, that’s like a $30 value)
• All you can drink (but not drive) beer (oh come on… That’s worth $100)
• All you can listen to live music ($10 cover…)
• One ticket to RoboGames in June (hey, that’s a $20 value right there…)
• Tour of the Lagunitas brewery and bottling plant (oh, at least $10)
• Chance to get autographs from Team “Beer Bash“, the flame-throwing, combat robot made from a beer keg (worth at least 25¢. )
• Opportunity to drive a real combat robot (priceless. Friggen, priceless.)
• and on and on. . .

So like, $170.25 of food, beer, and stuff for just $50!!! Buy Tickets here!

Lagunitas Brewing Company
1280 North McDowell Boulevard
Petaluma, CA 94954
21 and up only, please.

Only 100 lucky party-going people will be able to party with us at Lagunitas!

Your tickets gets you entry to the Lagunitas Robot Lounge, free food, free beer, a pair of tickets to the International Robogames, a goody bag stuffed with robotic delights and satisfaction in knowing that your drunken revelry goes towards making RoboGames 2009 better than ever this year!

Think of the children! And their robots!

Clicking below will embark you on this magnificent journey. See you at Lagunitas!
Buy Tickets here!

Thank you to our good friends (and sponsors of RoboGames 2009),

So, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.

His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg (watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.

I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:

(more…)

Is it any surprise that the Japanese kick our booty in the field of robotic catwalk supermodels?

Unfortunately, the video links seem to have broken, but here’s the original link and a reasonable translation

Dude.

I mean, wow.