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.

This is charming, thought up and done by Cinegraphic Studios. It’s also an adorable meditation on what the heck a robot actually *is*, anyway.

[Mange takk LaughingSquid!]

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!]

Welcome Robot Fighting League member Guerra De Robots, a confederation between IEEE, IEEE Mexico, and UPIITA

Their motto is “Luchando por nuestra identidad tecnológica”, or “Fighting for our technical identity.

We expect great things of them in the coming months, mostly involving solving highly refined technical problems in order to bash the living hell out of the other robot in the arena. ¡Que tenga buena suerte, todos!

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!

COMBOTS CUP V

Yes, it’s

COMBOTS CUP V
October 23-24th, 2010 at the beautiful San Mateo Expo Center in beautiful San Mateo, Ca. Tickets are on sale now at Combots.net!

COMBOTS CUP V is so stupendous I am contractually obligated to spell it in all caps.

COMBOTS CUP V is robot combat at its best, with competition from the tiniest 1-pound ant weights to 220lb heavyweights (which are on the biggish side).

Thank You Mad Overlord for the hi-def videos from RoboGames 2010, whoo.

See the thrill of victory, and the smoke and flames of defeat! See small children getting into hard core mechanical engineering and software programming! See who wins some of our $3500 prize purse, and who goes home in a bucket.