More from the irrefutable Magnus Würzer:

This is Mr. Robotics’ progress on his Mechwarrior, which so far he has spent exactly a day and a half on, using parts we had lying around at home, deep down, as a procrastination tool. He will still kick ass and/or take names.

Magnus Würzer of RoboExotica and Shifz fame has taken this video in my very own kitchen. It is of our Intern’s marshammlow roasting robot, a fine tetrix-based contraption that results in burned sugar par excellance:

See more awesome like this at this year’s RoboGames, oh boy that’s a lot of robots.

So, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.

His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg (watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.

I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:

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The advent of this robot clearly means Rosie the Robot is imminent, so people can stop asking, already.

From Bre Pettis and Adam Cechetti, here are the fruits of a long, punchy night at NYC Resistor:

Bre has established that Skynet will enable itself via tasty cheese-filled snacks:

This is one of those robots that I swear is alive. The noises it made were like an animal and it seemed that everytime we looked the other way, it was coming to life and changing things with the setup.

It shows that the revolution will come via Arduino and reprap controllers, and will be commented on by XKCD.

…Until someone loses an eye. Then it’s a game of “Find The Eye”. Mister Robotics has seen fit to start us up a nifty little RoboGames Flickr stream, and we humbly bring it to your attention by showing off pic of this weeks arena build in Austin, Texas, site of the Austin MakerFaire this weekend.

The fun that Mutt looks like he’s having, belies the fact that setting up the arena is an object lesson in what a bucket of suck looks like.

We have a whole gaggle of fighting robot goodness from all over the country in town for your discerning mayhemic pleasure, including our crack arena crew staff, represented above by our very own good ol’ boy Mutt Posey, Arena foreman and Lieutenant Awesome to Mister Robotic’s Captain Fabulous.

Robots, beer, and crowd pleasing antics will sure ensue in this weekend of Good Clean Fun.

Wish you were here, but here’s a wee small writeup we got in the Austin American-Statesman about the show this weekend.

. . .From the adorable Grant Imahara:

Yeah, do like Grant did and get yerself one-a them sexy stickers over in the sidebar there. Then you can say you were one of the cool kids way back when.

[Thanks Grant!]

I wrote a wee piece on io9. It’s an interview with Mythbuster Grant Imahara, an interesting lunch date and all around neat guy.

Check it out over there, then come over here for some upcoming awesomeness about Giant Killer Robots.

io9.com interview with Grant Imahara

Channel Nine’s priorities are straight, of course, in a data set where giant killer bipedal robots firing airsoft pellets are top priority. Which they are. So have a watch and get all slobbery over MechWars, and then build one and inhale the awesome.

This Week on C9: Dynamic Silverlight, VSTS, buying Caio, and Mech Wars

[Thanks Andrew!]

A giant thank you to all our staff volunteers competitors and everybody else who made this all happen!

The results for this year’s RoboGames are up at The Official RoboGames Website, thanks for playing, we’ll see you next year!

Those clever Aussies. Really now.

A Man Built a Robot To Kill Him. And Succeeded.

An 81-year-old man from Burleigh Heads, Australia, downloaded plans to build a killer robot from the Internet, built the complex machine, and then used it to kill himself in his driveway.

Big Dog, Blah blah Boston Dynamics Etc etc Little Dog, DARPA d3ThB0t, etc etc, BTDT.

But none of that makes up for how freakin’ eerie this thing is.

So there has been a humongous amount of foofaraw and kerfuffle bout the possibility of Battlebots coming back to TV.

We here at SB are enthused by this idea, we love robot combat in any form and have close ties with Trey Roski and Greg Munson, the guys who brought it to TV in the first place, and with a little luck, are bringing it back. Battlebots made it possible to make robot combat attractive to entities that can support it. May that day come again! (Please? Please.)

Some trustworthy media outlets are shouting this from the hilltops like it s a done deal, but according to the Horse’s Mouth, nothing is quite a done deal yet, but they are shooting for a college competition sometime in the next year, maybe as early as June, maybe November.

In the meantime, RoboGames is a done deal and will be filling San Francisco this June 13-15th with hundreds of robots. So polish that bot and sign up for RoboGames.

Apropos of Whurley’s account of his near-death robot experience, imagine what they coulda done with another robot and a giant bulletproof robot arena?

Here’s two other superheavyweights, Ziggy (the white one) and The Judge (both of whom you might recognize from some TV show or other:

Keep in mind that though they look small on the screen, these guys are each 340 pounds of solid robot muscle. They regularly tuna-can the arena bumpers (those I-beams inside the arena) with very little effort. They also take three or four people to load in and out, and they are sharp and pointy.

Here are two more ‘bots that I know for a fact are never, ever, ever tested or demo’ed anywhere where there is even a remote chance a human might get in the way, and these guys are “only” 220-pound Heavyweights. Please take note of the squeals of childish delight as the mechanisms steadily beat the shit out of each other:

This is Brutality Vs. Megabyte. Megabyte has been a robot combat knucklehead since small times, and is truly the major reason we had to buy and entirely new arena. Brutality is notable in that Little Paulie Ventimiglia, age 19 at the time, beat the living heck out of previously undefeated world Battlebots champ Biohazard.
On his first ever robot combat outing. With his first ever combat robot. I love evolution.

Here’s another video that shows you don’t have top have a Spinning Thing Of Death to kick serious ass:

That was Sewer Snake Vs. Original Sin, both of whom tightly conform to Judge Dave’s Rule, “Learn To Fucking Drive”. That match was at MakerFaire 2007 (which coincidentally is coming up soonish!)

Here’s another video that shows exactly what kind of physical forces we’re the dealing with here. There’s a reason we have an arena with a roof:

Once again, these robots are as large and heavy as Steel Reign, the robot which figured in the BarCamp Austin Anomaly. Look at how big the robot is compared to the humans. We’re not talking tinkertoys here, boys and girls.

The best part about this whole debacle, is that it is proven that it’s WAY better live.

So get your tickets to RoboGames and bring your freakin’ earplugs already.

Whurley alerts us to teensy weensy, tiny, itty bitty almost nonexistent leetle accident that happened in the parking lot of BarCamp Austin featuring Team XD, former robot combat contenders.

Click below for the video.

It appears that during a demo in the parking lot, Steel Reign got a little bit big for his britches, plowed through the crowd and managed to take out the A/C unit on the neighboring building.

Good Times.

FiGHT!

[Thanks SeanBonner!]