In yet another episode of living the life you wish you had, last Friday I extracted myself from the RoBunker and went to witness The Head Rotor and Al Honig, world famous artists, show off Chassis the beer pouring robot.

Ky00t, thy name is Chassis:

More pics after the break.
(more…)

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. . .

The sexy pixelpushers over at Diesel Sweeties have made us twitch with amusement yet again:

[Sent from the bountiful rss reader of Laughing Squid, yay!]

FiGHT!

[Thanks SeanBonner!]

. . .Just says “Chipper-Shredder” to me.

We love the Japanese.

[Thanks Eggshell Robotics!]

This is *so* going on my permanent record.

My Robot Friend and I will be smoking in the girl’s room if you need us.

Boing Boing gives much-deserved jollies this morning to our favorite Japanese robot kraut-rock art collective, Maywa Denki.

The Head Rotor brought these guys up a while back and we have been obsessive, ravening, drooling fan-slaves ever since.

Above, Nobumichi Tosa, plays the takedamaru at the Taipei nightclub, Luxy. This performance was part of the 2005 B!AS-International Sound Art Exhibition. Pic courtesy Stuff On Fire

Immerse yourself in their prototypical object art-units and be one with the joy.

The Flaming Lotus Girls have come out with their all-new 2-year fire art cheesecake calendar!

Buy one for all your gifting needs!

Who doesn’t like bunches of hot women (and men), artfully photographed with some of the most amazing and incomprehensibly awesome fire art in the world?

For all you hippie types there’s also nice photos of the Black Rock Desert but Seriously, come on, GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! (and guys) FIRE FIRE FIRE (fire!).

Buy lots of calendars and tell all your friends about the world’s premiere women-centric fire arts group! The FLGs, they do not kid around when it comes to in-depth pyromania.

We’re off to Tokyo University and the fantabulous robot museum today, after visiting every. robot. store. in. Akihabara. Yesterday. Oh man do we gots pics. Here’s some from a nice little gathering thrown by the wonderful Norri of GetRobo.

Here’s Mr. R with the illustrious Lem Fugitt of Robots-Dreams, enlarged because they are just so dang cute:

(more…)

Li’l Missy here, working through the obstacle of spotty-ass wifi in the hotel room to get you up to date on what the heck we’ve been doing since we vanquished the forces of entropy and got to Tokyo intact.

We’re here for the International Robot Expo, the largest robot exhibition in Japan. While there are many booths that feature the same old industrial robots and bolt sorting machines and etc, there’s also a ton of stuff that really fails to suck. We’ve been meeting interwebs people in person for the first time, and are having a ball doing it.

Here are a few pics detailing what we are seeing.

This is Tokyo Big Site, a massive convention center where IREX is being held. It’s big. Real big. No, bigger. There are five or six huge conventions going on, as well as lots of interstitial restaurants and vending machines. None of the vending machines contain beer or schoolgirls’ panties, but we will keep looking, don’t you fret.

AIIIEE!!! Teeny winky shuffle bots with the tiny, tiny feets! Teh ky00t! It burns!

These little robots had no wheels, only little vibrating feet that got them hither and thither. they seemed to be directionally controlled, although I could not tell if it was autonomous and human. They also seem to be light-sensitive for light and dark areas underneath them.

Three words: Robo-One Laser Tag. This guy is playing Terminator-style in a cloud of talcum powder, click on the thumbnail to get the full on end-of-the-world-disaster feeling. A bunch of them played against each other for all the glory and the loser bought the next round of beers. It was awesome, and by awesome, I mean totally sweet. Better than ninjas. And nothing is better than ninjas, except for maybe more ninjas.

Creepy? Yes. Highly amusing to watch sober-suited Japanese industrialists squirm as they handle a fussy robot? HELLS yes. The Real Care Baby is a doll that simulates a real child for use in daily life and to find out which reprobate highschooler would do well to never. ever procreate. They cry, they fuss, they do the things babies do. They are all identical. It’s weird in an oddly compelling way.

More in a bit, as our wifi is funky here.

And the gorgeous and loverly prep for Roboexotica charges on, with organizers running back and forth in a flurry, wire everywhere, and many, many, many MANY spent cans of fine Austrian beer.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Robotics weeping softly and twitching, as he finishes Chapek in the home stretch before the show.

In the background you can see the legendary RoboMoji, constant attendee at RoboExotica and maker of the most carefully crafted mojitos made by a machine in Vienna in this room during these dates. Notice Chapek looming malignantly in the background. There is also a very interesting head-mounted device which mysteriously appears without any apparent creator.
Investigative reporting to follow.

This one pretty much speaks for itself.

Roboexotica has been getting spiffy mention in a few places.

Myself, Mr. Robotics and The Head Rotor convened at the Robunker last night to faff around in preparation for Roboexotica in Vienna this year.

El Espanol Borracho will be making a new and improved appearance, as will Chapek.

Left: Mr Robotics and The Rotor stare at Chapek, trying to figure out where the code rot is.

For those of you just tuning in, Roboexotica is of course the world-renown festival of cocktail robots:

Until recently, no attempts had been made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.

Right: The Rotor corrupts the innocent, and the innocent like it.

We spent last night mumbling to ourselves, barking at each other to get out of the way, and most important, drinking beer. We also experimented with accelerants, and ways to make Kahlua tasty (I personally don’t think this is possible).

The Rotor made helpful suggestions about where to throttle what to make which flow a little smoother. Julie Andrews hid in the closet. Fugu The Deadly Hellbeast made sure everyone got kisses. Soma FM kept everybody sane-ish.

Mr. Robotics would like you to know that he hates robots. Really.

Chapek is in the background, having a servo issue. Or maybe it’s a software issue. Or maybe something’s not zeroed right. or maybe. . .

We take off for Vienna Sunday. Rotor will be at the Fortress of Solitude, cursing economy-class legroom, airline blackout dates, and tweaking Chassis’ brain. We hoist ein grosses bier in his honor.

Lenore from the superlative Evil Mad Scientists sends along this jolly web page with a ton of PhD level robotic goodness. Some of the videos have been taken down since, but you can read all about it. . .