Survival Research Labs, long-lived and lauded punk rock robot cabaret of fun and destruction, was gently reminded this week that the SF Fire Department has a long memory.

Awww, who could stay mad at something like this?

From the SRL blog:

This is not the first time that the SFFD has been responsible for shows by SRL being banned both in San Francisco and elsewhere. In 1995 we were planning a show with Somarts that was funded by the BBC as part of a feature length documentary Pandemonium when the SFFD warned the then director of Somarts, Jack Davis, that any attempt to host an SRL event would result in the possible closure of Somarts. This was, according the to the SFFD representative, because SRL had ‘humiliated the SFFD in a prime time news segment that appeared on the Connie Chung show a few months earlier’.

The fire department holds grudges, but SRL are no angels either. It’s a no-win argument, I guess.

Full story, pics and video at SRL.org

The mighty works of Zenta, the Norwegian hexapod mastermind covered previously in these humble pages, have been discovered by none other than one of the the shining bastions of all things awesome, Popular Science. You all can now say you knew Zenta when.

It’s nice to see that the morphing robot has come such a long way since July.

We have a spiffy little interview with Zenta, The Man Himself, which you may peruse if you care to do so.

Everybody congratulate Bentern on scooping Pop Sci, then tell him to GET BACK TO WORK.

One step closer to the robots taking over!

Wired’s Eric Smalley has an awesomely titled article about a Massachusetts based startup, Harvest Automation, is testing a small farming robot to work in nurseries in the horticulture industry.

The Harvest Automation robots are knee-high, wheeled machines. Each robot has a gripper for grasping pots, a deck for carrying pots, and an array of sensors to keep track of where it is and what’s around it. Teams of robots zip around nursery fields, single-mindedly spacing and grouping plants. Think Wall-E without the doe eyes and cuddly personality, or the little forest-tending ‘bots in the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running.

Thank you Wired!

A projectile promotion device for canine amusement purposes.

Via The MSNBC Future of Tech site

So, after we did our little robot shindig on television a while back, we caught the attention of all kinds of people – rabid robot loving kids, Concerned Mothers, our insurance company (“Ma’am, this is *not* a competitive table setting competition.”) – and among the hordes emerged this article.

This is a written, blow by blow accounting and evisceration of the Killer Robots show. It’s brutal. It’s bitchy. It’s sarcastic and it probably could have used one or two things like “fact checking” and “research” and “getting off the couch once in a while”.

This of course means that it’s one of the funniest things we have ever read, hands down, whether it’s about us or not.

Perhaps the biggest letdown of this whole event is the fact that the difference between this arena and a Wal-Mart parking lot is the placement of the lines painted on the floor (and the lack of dirty diapers in the arena). What happened to the Pulverizers? What happened to the Spike Strip? Hell, there’s not even the famed Kill Saws! And really “Kill Saw” probably has a trademark on it but I mean the RoboGames people couldn’t come up with a second-best knock-off like “Discs of Inconvenience” or something?

We’re actually going ‘Disc Of Inconvenience” shopping right now.

I will say that my shiftless largely humor-free reprobate misanthrope of a partner, Mister Robotics, spent last night laughing out loud for well over an hour. This has not happened in about two years.

From the start of the show, after the weird opening montage of people screaming at robots and cowering in fear and shock, Grant Imahara introduces us all to the sport in an incredibly brief run-down that demonstrates that virtually nothing has changed in the sport since the days of BattleBots. Well, except for the addition of flamethrowers. And Grant’s teeth. Okay, maybe that was rude of me but seriously if you Google “grant imahara” one of the suggested searches is “grant imahara’s teeth”. Don’t blame me for being a racist douchebag, blame Google.

So Go here and Read This, laugh your ass off, and then tell him to call us. Seriously.

*An Addendum: I’ll have you know we do *not* play bingo in the arena, sir. It’s Keno the old folks are into. Sheesh.

Sometimes you are in the mood for something moody, something fantastically stylish and ALSO something confusing and intriguing.

Behold: mannequins, automata, style for days and also …

people behaving … as … such???

(click through to the ‘tube for embiggening)
and thank you, the ever amazing Coilhouse!

From Neatorama, of course:

It’s really hard to say anything snarky about that, it’s just beautiful,and still works. Boggles the mind, really.

Hurray for Happy Steampunk Robot Magnets! They are adorable and fun, loaded with delight for all the steampunk lovin’, magnet-noodlin’, fridge-door hangin’ folks in your kitchen!

They were thought up and done by the fine folks at Neatorama, who absolutely *promised* they would take the electrodes off my chihuahua and get my power tools back from the scrapyard the very *minute* I told EVERYONE I KNOW about them! Whee!!

There are many cute robots to chose from, they do jolly dances as you make your morning tea! Love them and their nutty boltiness!

Please write to them and say that you just love their steampunk robots, and that you would like to buy them by the gross, otherwise their hands might slip and HAHAHAHAHA OOPS CRISPY @LILFOO! Hahaha! those wacky, wacky Neatorama guys. Wacky.

Oh god please help they have my dog and my mig welder

Heather Knight, RoboGames Academic Chair, Robot Film Fest founder and all around great person, was on CNN with Data The Robot and Fareed Zakaria this past week.

The Robotics Society of America, proud 501(c)3 nonprofit and co-promoter for RoboGames, has been picked to be in the running for $25k as part of the Pepsi Refresh project!

We Need Your Help! Vote for us to get $25,000 bucks so that we can get underserved kids building robots, and have them compete at RoboGames!

We have until the end of the month to end up in the Top 15 slots!

If we get funded, we’ll have the ability to get a whole slew of robot kits for a whole slew of kids that would otherwise not have them, or the teaching time to learn science math and engineering through robots!

You can sign in to the site with FaceBook, or create an account there; you can text, tweet, reblog it, sing it from the mountain tops, whatever helps us get the word out!

You can vote for us EVERY SINGLE DAY until the end of the month! Vote early, vote often, tell your friends, bribe your enemies!

RoboGames, unlike some other youth robotics programs we might mention, never charges for our Under 18 youth league! We don’t restrict by ability, equipment, or anything else, and we provide valuable experience and international exposure to all our competitors!

We have been doing this for nine years on a largely all-volunteer basis, but just imagine what we, who have done so much for so many with so little, could do if we had some actual cash to grease the skids!

We’ll keep you updated as the month goes on, currently we’re in 48th place!

Thanks very much, we’re all crossing our fingers! Get out there and vote for us! (please. Please.)

As the mysteriously, regrettably absent Head Rotor, Back In the Day, once said: “AAAAHGETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEAAAAAHHH!”*

It’s the dramatic on-pull of the sensory vest that gets me every time.

Thanks Science Seminars for the link, also for the comment “It is creepy and sounds like a toilet.”

*It should not automatically be construed that The Rotor’s mysterious, regrettable disappearance had anything to do with the aforementioned exclamation. Although if it were construed, automatically or not, it could be neither confirmed or denied. All we know is that he’s gone and WE KNOW NOTHING, OKAY?