Autonomous Underwater Vehicle In Shark Bite Horror:

An Autonomous Underwater vehicle used for exploring the Gulf oil spill has been chomped on the hiney by a shark. From Keysnet:

Waldo, the 6-foot autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) spent 28 days at sea and found no significant traces of underwater oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill after being launched July 19th. It did however encounter a shark, when that shark bit into and damaged Waldo’s rudder.

The best part about this shark’s timing is the fact that it probably bit Waldo during Shark Week. That shark’s publicist is totally worth the money.

Here’s the main post about Waldo’s close encounter, and a bit more about what exactly the AUVs do, from NRDC, the kindly hippies who, along with Oceana, and Mote Marine Laboratory, launched Waldo on his mission:

The autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) like Waldo run for approximately 30 days at a time and NRDC’s sponsored run of Waldo ended on day 28 – after he had transmitted roughly a ½ million water sample points – when a shark bit into and damaged Waldo’s rudder and his left wing was lost. Since then, the robot has been recovered and hopefully will soon be out for another run with 7 other gliders to monitor for the oil from the submerged plumes of oil droplets in the Gulf. Just yesterday, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirmed the existence of a submerged oil plume from the Gulf spill that’s at least 22 miles long – an AUV was critical to this discovery. Additional AUV runs should help us keep track the route of this oil.

It has been noted that the presence of a shark in a giant, oil slicked disaster zone was actually a really good sign that the sharks in the Gulf have not been completely destroyed by the folly of man. It is also a sign, however, of exactly how pissed the sharks are and what they’ll do if they ever find out that the oil leak was our fault.

[Thanks Botropolis]!

For God, For Country and for the Furtherance of Robotic World Domination, via the Yale Grab Lab. As we used to say in the marching band, “Guinness: It’s what’s for breakfast”

Via Engadget, Technology Review, and every other damn place.

Yeah, we iterate that with this:

Ear waving mechanism test. Yum.

Form Robot Living, a tree planting concept machine. . .

. . .that looks suspiciously like this tree harvesting machine of doom:

Here’s footage of the Kali-like tree creator-destroyer in action:

Yeah, that’s what we thought.

They always make us so darn gooey-feeling.

To be sure, this one looks like a work in progress.

Nemo Gould is a sculptor who works by himself but also with Applied Kinetic Arts, a loosely formed collective of artistic ne’er do wells bent on raising awareness of kinetic arts in all its amorphously defined glory.

To see more jaw dropping knock down awesome robots from Nemo, see his website here.

Willow Garage roolz, and not just because they have been a delightsome sponsor for RoboGames. They have invented the PR2, which among it other fantastic talents, will soon become commercially available.

Scott Hassan, Willow Garage founder, made a quick a dirty PR2 Contest after the PR2 launch party (for which all of us here at the Robunker suck because we couldn’t make it) for which the winners competed for a 10k aggregate prize.

Presented without (too much) comment, the winner:

[Thanks Hizook!]

Christian Ristow makes giant robots. His wife, Christina, also makes giant robots. They are about to be blessed with a small robobaby of their own.

This is not a robobaby. This is a giant killer robot.

If that is not enough, he has started up a new blog about hauling large piles of metal from one place to another, and back again.

He is a little like these here inhabitant of the RoBunker, only, *way* cooler. Please extend you attention to words by the maker of the Hand Of Man, The Subjugator, and the Spiderbot.

This is also not a robobaby, this is a robot made to look like and arachnid.

You may have seen their work during SRL shows, exquisite classy gallery shows, or in the desert:

Photo Montage courtesy Mr. Nightshade’s Flickr stream

The new blog is about the pitfalls and triumphs that happen when you are an artist and do everything for yourself for a living. It is a window one doesn’t often get to see through when one is a spectator at a slick show or well done live perfromance. We over here are enjoying it immensely!

Over at Wired Gamelife, here’s a nifty video of the ever popular Kuka industrial robots, who seem to be moving more and more into entertainment (you may remember them from a Jon Bon Jovi concert or perhaps from Wired’s NextFest).

The robot is making a light sculpture in real time for the
Xbox Game Halo Reach. Players log in to Facebook and get to plot one tiny speck of light in the location of their choice.

It is a nifty little project that the kids can squeal about, but I can’t help but think it’s really just a massive plot to direct the correct coordinates for total earth destruction by the alien forces watching us from behind Pluto. I would categorically refuse to participate in the destruction of human kind at the hands of faceless superfuture beings, but IT’S SO SHINY! Also, giant robot arm! YES!

Or “Your-Plastic-Pal-that-plumbs-the-very-depths-of-The-Uncanny-Valley-who-might-also-be-fun-to-be-with-once-the-screaming-has-stopped”:

Seriously people, I love Japan. Can anyone give us a quick translation of the conversation?

[Via @thinkgeek]

Mechanical Victorians -Mechtorians- look great in drawings, paintings, prints and prototypes. They also raise the bar for production-run, high end, limited edition vinyl toys.

Bruce Whistlecraft, aka Doktor A, employs an array of olde and nu skool craftsmanships to take the entire cast of fictional robots on a time-bending fantasmutational romp.

I’m completely charmed by the imagery from an actual past, informed by a recent past, reconfigured as robot characters from the past’s alternative future. Check it out for yourself.

[Thanks Wondermark, Le Boing, and everyone else who posted this]

Cris Rose has so many talent chops, that I’m thinking about writing this post in a spreadsheet.

Artist, Designer, Fabricator, Collaborator, Customizer, Collector Whew! He’s busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest who designs, builds and sends original robot toys all over the world to collectors and galleries. Though the figures have no traditional “working parts”, they do have incredibly believable details and lovely backstories. Cris is particularly interested in the relationship between robots and nature, and each character shows its wear and tear with pride. I hope to catch up with Cris soon and find out more about his robots, their histories and the art of decay.

[Via Neatorama!]

Kazu Terasaki, longtime SB friend colleague and contributor, comes at us with a new variation on a familiar theme:

iPad walking robot!
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Whee.

[Thank Lem!]

Equals OSM:

“Chinese students built this awesome robot sculpture for their graduation project. Almost all of the parts come from an old truck and the total budget was 300,000 yuan. The final robot is almost 32 feet tall and weighs over 8,800 lbs.”

Via Instructables