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.)

Over here we dig pretty much anything that WowWee Robotics put out (hearkening back to the days when Mark Tilden used to crash on Mr. Robotics’ couch), and at CES they have unveiled a glorious, shiny, injection-molded plethora of new toys to mess about with.

Here’s a nice lil video with Veronica Belmont and Tribot.

GuardBot is totally going to be completely self-sufficient and on its own while you are out of the house. It will identify obstacles, never run out of batteries, run the right sound bite at the right moment, bring you coffee and collect the mail. Just like the Aibo, the ER-1, and HERO do. Um. Did.

More stuff from The neato Artificial Intelligence Blog pointed out by V. Blue.

Warren Ellis channels all robots, everywhere, when he repackages the Three Laws:

Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan?

[Thanks Matt! (via Le Boing)]

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

Futurist Paul Saffo expounds on why you should never, ever be allowed to drive a motor vehicle, ever:

Move Over, the Robot’s Driving: By the Year 2050, Forecasters Predict Robots Will Rule the Road

(Mr. Robotics already thinks I should never be allowed to drive a motor vehicle, ever, under any circumstances. Also, it should be made illegal for me personally to parallel park.)

[Thanks Paul!]

This just in from far-flung correspondent Ali Spagnola, and artist who does a bunch of stuff, not the least of which is thie neat music video:

Robots For Everyone indeed. So cute, so disarming. but what about when they TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND DESTROY ALL THAT WE HOLD DEAR?

Yeah I thought so. Off to Tea with Mr. Joy.

Let’s hear it for the Suicidebots homies Stanford University, who have won yet another DARPA Grand Challenge, this time over a citylike environment:

In all, 11 robotic vehicles set out on the race course Saturday morning, and while five scrubbed out for various reasons, the fact that six driverless vehicles drove a delivery route seems like a win for innovation. No car finished in the first race in 2004.

Big ups to Sebastian Thrun and the team that made Junior road-ready

South Korea has declared that there will be a robot in every home by the year 2020.

Yeah we’re late on the bandwagon to this, but we thought it was worth reporting since they actually seem to have a chance at success. South Korea is ridiculously wired (they are wifi and cell-coverage saturated) and are famous for being a population of early-adopters and gadget freaks. An example – remember Dog Poo Girl? Never fear, I am sure they use their powers for evil too.

[Via Freshcreation.nl]

We get that much closer to Skynet:

Storm Worm Strikes At Security Pros

The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days, says Josh Corman, host-protection architect for IBM/ISS, who led a session on network threats.

“As you try to investigate [Storm], it knows, and it punishes,” he says. “It fights back.”

::shiver::

Seriously, I really think there’s an oil-hall putsch going on or something. Loyal correspondent Johnny Payphone sends us these tidbits from around the country:

Rail Worker Killed in Robot Locomotive Accident
Runaway Robot Rail Cars Terrorize Portland
Detroit Bans Robot Rail Car Menace

Remind me not to hang around any rail yards in the immediate future. . .

HoooBoy.

9 South African Soliders were killed in an exercise which involved an autonomous Oerlikon GDF-005 anti-aircraft machine. The machine went haywire, spraying the soldiers with bullets after it appeared to become jammed during the exercise.

Sources say it was a software error.

(The video above is from a few years back but is making the rounds with this story. Info Here.)

Helen? Are you Sure?

[via Wired]

This just in from Stealth Correspondent Jared The Roboticist:

I have undeniable that the Roomba is no meager vacuuming robot, but is in fact a fully aware killing machine. I can only suspect why my Roomba Scheduler tried to burn down my apartment, maybe because of the beer I spilt on it, breaking its clean button, maybe it feels I don’t appreciate all the cleaning it does for me, but I came home to my roomba pulling the power cord from my printer out of the outlet strip. I picked the roomba off the cord and sent it on its way. I noticed a short time later that it had started to push a small wire bracket that I can only assume is stored inside its chassis for such devious purposes.

(Jared kindly enclosed photos of The Incident):

I watched as it pushed this bracket directly into the prongs of the power cord which the Roomba had so expertly pulled only part of the way out of the power strip. To my horror, this created a huge spark which turned out the power just in time for me to see my power strip catch fire. Luckily, I was able to immediately put it out, but I know now to never trust this killbot with my floors again.

You heard it here first, kids. Jared has pinpointed the beginnings of the upcoming robotic revolution. Make nice now and be the last up against the wall.

. . .cats and dogs, living together. . .

From that sterling paper of record, the UK Metro:

People will marry robots, says scientist

Artificial intelligence researcher David Levy was awarded a PhD today by a Dutch university for his thesis, Intimate Relationships With Artificial Partners.

The Head Rotor, august recipient of one of those PH things himself (are they printed on litmus paper?) no doubt revels in the new addition to the company of he and his ilk.

From the lovely people at Evil Mad Scientist Labs, who are reveling in the latest edition of Make: Magazine:

On page 60, you can find the article that we wrote about how to build the Larson Scanner (named after Glen A. Larson); a scanning eye for your old-school Cylon or KITT pumpkin projects.

The article is actually a slightly updated version of our project from last Halloween, Make A Cylon Jack-O-Lantern. Last year’s how-to is still online– and we have recently checked to make sure that all the parts on the parts list are still available.

Either way, let’s see those Cylons! If you build one, please post your pictures in the Evil Mad Science Auxiliary.

It’s time. . .to make. . .The Cylons!!!!!