Lem over at Robots-Dreams was musing about this pic he came across on the interwebs, and wanted to know more about it.

Well, my friends, this robot is the work of a robot freak from Oakland, California named Justin Grey, whom we have had the pleasure and privilege of working with on many occasions. Justin builds gorgeous fire-based instruments of irresistible destruction.

I have asked him for more info about his newest creature, but in the meantime here is a video of a robot he made last year, named Robot Libby after his dog:

See more of his work at his blog.

Cute little incredibly disturbing robots learn to empathize with their human overlords, the better to conquer them with (disturbing) cuteness:

Much like a human child, the robot learns from experience how to respond to emotions displayed by people around it.

If someone shows fear or cries out in pain, the robot may learn to change its behaviour to appear less threatening, backing away if necessary. If someone cries out in happiness, it may even detect the difference, and one day fine-tune its responses to individuals.

“It’s mostly behavioural and contact feedback,” project coordinator Dr Lola Canamero is quoted as saying in a BBC News story on Feelix Growing. “Tactile feedback and emotional feedback through positive reinforcement, such as kind words, nice behaviour or helping the robot do something if it is stuck,” she said.

For those of you sitting around doing frak-all with your Saturday night (like me), I present an oldie but a goodie:

From RoboCentral:

AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion. At the centre of the AquaJelly is a watertight, laser-sintered pressure vessel. This comprises a central, electric drive, two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, the charge control device and the servo motors for the swashplate.

Auf Deutch von Festo.com.

[via DesignNews]

That’s pretty much all I have to say about that.

*My* hexapod merely mopes under the table and frightens small children.

This darling little thing was made by Matt Denton, follow his other projects on Hexapodrobot.com

Robot Evolution, for your watching pleasure, because we’re freakin’ busy over here:

[Thanks Rochelle!]

Further proof that the Netherlands is still cooler than we are:

Payment is automatic too. It just magically gets debited from one’s account. Way to never, ever have to get out of the car ever again. As The Rotor Says, “I Love Living In The Future!”.

Further reading over at Reuters.

Here’s a spiffy thing sent along by the irrefutable Amacker Bullwinkle:

“My friend Mikey is on the crew that just did Nexi. . .his girlfriend Neri, is Nexi’s voice.”

Who the heck is Nexi? I hear you cry. Well:

And by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

I love those crazy kids down at the MIT Media Lab.

The New Space Station Robot Asks to be Called “Dextre the Magnificent”

“In a surprising and potentially troubling request, the new space station robot known as Dextre demanded that astronauts refer to it in the future at “Dextre the Magnificent.” Brandishing power tools that would make any handyperson blush, the mobile servicing system thanked humans for creating it and promised a glorious future where humans would retain an important role in the new robot order. Dextre was deployed last month to help build and service the International Space Station. As seen in the above picture, Dextre is truly a technological marvel, wielding long arms capable of handling both small tools and large modules with precision dexterity. ”

NASA [via Bot Junkie]

Robot Evolution May be Mirroring The Evolution of Life

According to [Han Moravec, founder of the CarNAYgie Mellon's Robotics Institute], our robot creations are evolving similar to how life on Earth evolved, only at warp speed. By his calculations, by mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, will be beyond the scope of robots.

Well? Go on, discuss. . .you in the back there, speak up.

This machine holds the same sort of fascination that backhoes and pile drivers do: large, loud, cool industrial machinery, used for completely boring reasons. Presenting the UT-1 Ultra Trencher, the size of a condo and selling for a measly 10 millions pounds:

“Weighting 50 tonnes and the size of a small house, it is designed to bury largediameter oil and gas pipelines laid on the ocean floor. It does this by ‘flying’ down up to a mile deep below the surface using powerful propellers. It then lands over the pipeline and deploys a pair of ‘jet swords’ either side of the pipe which inject high pressure water to ‘fluidise’ the surface. Burying the pipelines protects them from fishing, shipwrecks and natural currents. This enables oil and gas to be safely transported from the offshore fields to land to provide secure energy supplies.”

“Jet Swords” can also be used to, oh I dunno, slice apart undersea telecom cables in preparation for the oncoming robot destruction!

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

And on a lighter note, here’s my favorite video of a crab being catastrophically decompressed into a deep sea pipe:

The pressure was something like 2700psi at a depth of 6000ft, and from what I could gather the cut the rov was making was something like .25 inches wide. Good Times!

Or Passover, whatever.

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE SOUNDTRACK! AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [cough]

Those clever Aussies. Really now.

A Man Built a Robot To Kill Him. And Succeeded.

An 81-year-old man from Burleigh Heads, Australia, downloaded plans to build a killer robot from the Internet, built the complex machine, and then used it to kill himself in his driveway.

. . .The Squid beat us to posting our wonderful new RoboGames 2008 poster, created by the superlative Josh Ellingson, upon whom Mr. Robotics has a complete robot-crush.

Ain’t she pretty?

Speaking of which, RoboGames is coming up June 13-18th, 2008 (duh) THERE IS STILL TIME TO REGISTER YOUR ROBOT.

“*My* robot?” I hear you cry, “Why, it’s just a dorky little thing made out of spoonstraws and a BASIC stamp!”

All the better, we say, bring it on down! RoboGames has over 70 events in which to participate, there MUST be something your robot fits into!

“Hey wait! What about those of us who don’t have a robot yet?”

Never fear young apprentices, there are so many ways to learn about robots it’s not event funny! Be a Maker! Learn an Instructable! Become an Evil Mad Scientist!

Indulge your redneck know-how and adapt your science fetish for good and come out and play with us!

“That’s too hard! I just wanna watch!”

All right, fine, if you just wanna watch, and don’t want to take part ion what could be THE MOST FUN YOU HAVE EVER HAD IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE (seriously) you can buy tickets here.

Yes, people do buy the VIP passes, and love them.

Registration closes in two months! Think up something, and we’ll see you at Fort Mason!

We journeyed to the southland last Thursday nigt to partake in a fun little event organized by the the AAAI, or the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

The topic was robot racing and the guests were none other than Sebastian Thrun, of Stanford University, the winner of the DARPA desert Challenge; and Red Whittaker, of the CarNAYgie Mellon robot racing team.

They both gave lovely presentations, and made me want to cover them in gooey scientific lovin’.

It appears there is some sort of machination going on over at Instructables which merits mentioning.

Mostly because the robot is cute.

I am sure the folks over on the Instructables forums will do their best at darkly hinting at Interesting things to come, I’m sure. . .

*With love to Tom Waits. . .