So the Robot Film Fest was a couple of weeks ago in NYC, and because we are a sub par blogger we failed to cover it in any form while we were there (except for a few questionable photos which showed up on Twitter and probably a few embarrassing YouTube videos which have yet to surface).

Pictured: A performance by Tim Laursen and Double Rainbow, the robot rock band. Photo by SB.

Anyhow, the event was a glorious success, and Heather Knight (beloved RoboGames Academic Chair) and the fabulous team from Magic Futurebox who co-produced the event were rock stars and made everyone else feel like one too.

Here’s a few tidbits from the event (for which I was a jury member):

Paparazzi snapped in his face, but 1337 was not fazed. Wearing a scarlet bow tie slightly askew, the 2-foot-tall humanoid robot continued walking down the red carpet – guided firmly by his stooping programmer Carlos Asmat. With the air of a Hollywood film premiere, the first ever Robot Film Festival was underway this past weekend at the 3-Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in lower Manhattan.

-a lovely piece from New Scientist

Cute Photos From Science House

Lots more Robot Film Fest press here.

In addition to failing at blogging the event, I actually achieved the unlikely – I was in the same room as many of my robotic twitter cohort, such as Dustyn Robots, The Chief Robot, and Erico Guizzo – and I failed to meet all of them except for Erico, with whom I had a three second convo before he lolloped off to see his young family.

I blame the exquisite robot-themed cocktails – the BeatBot was an especial favorite.

There are already schemes and plans being put into play for next year, we can’t wait!

The full complement of movies shown at the film fest can be found here, thanks to Marek Michalowski of BeatBots

In the spirit of “Scent Of A Robot” by Pete Miser and with all of the awesome hipster cheesiness you can pack into a trucker hat, we bring you “Me And My Robots”

This short film is a contender for the very first Robot Film Festival, about which we are super excited, and about which more in a bit.

Love robots? Now they can love you back!

Welcome to Hooman Samani’s Lovotics – an area of research dealing with human-to-robot relations.

Across 11 research papers, Samani has outlined — and begun to develop — an extremely complex artificial intelligence that simulates psychological and biological systems behind human love. To do this, Samani’s robots are equipped with artificial versions of the human “love” hormones — Oxytocin, Dopamine, Seratonin, and Endorphin — that can increase or decrease, depending on their state of love. On a psychological level, by using MRI scans of human brains to mirror the psychology of love, the robots are also equipped with an artificial intelligence that tracks their “affective state”; their level of affection for their human lover.

Observe as this lovely combination of R2D2 and Roomba strives for your affection:

After reading this article I immediately visited this tv-tropes piece, knowing all-well that I could suffer a similar fate as this fellow.

I came to the conclusion that one of my favorite responses to “What is this thing you call love?” was from a jolly assassin droid by the name of HK-47:

“Definition: ‘Love’ is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, love is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and fewer would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose, against statistically long odds.“

Now please, stop asking us about pleasure bots.

I blame the Svedka robot.

It wants them BIGGER, PRECIOUS:

Video courtesy RobotCity

Can you freaking *imagine* huge, buzzing quadrotors on a skyscraper building site somewhere in Southeast Asia (I can only imagine it would happen in Southeast Asia first for some reason)? It would be so Terminator.

Granted, it’s *really* hard to scale up this sort of machinery (ask any humanoid developer) but the day when the low rumble of back-hoe sized armies of autonomous, insect-like manipulation robots capable of multiple degrees of movement and bent on their one and only overriding task will soon be at hand! Whee!

Video done up by Daniel Mellinger at the University Of Pennsylvania, Philly, creating tomorrow’s robot world domination today!

[Thanks New Scientist!]

Too lazy to learn how to play an instrument? Then let the good ol’ folks at the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs do it for you!

The project’s name is PossessedHand and it allows control over someone’s hand via electrical muscle stimuli!

As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.

From the always superlative Robots-Dreams comes a great English-language summary of this month’s RoboCon Magazine, for we pathetic non-Japanese speaking English speakers.

Among the juicy delights afforded us by the always well-done RoboCon robotics journal is a fab, huge article covering RoboGames 2011, at which we were very honored to have an enthusiastic contingent of competitors from Robot Japan.

Robot Japan is a collection of robotics enthusiasts that holds meetings, maintain a blog, and serves as a relatively informal organizing body for robotics events around Japan.

We were excited that several members were planning on attending RoboGames 2011, and that was even before a little thing like one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, and a horrendous, devastating tsunami occurred right in their back yard.

To recap: DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI, and they made it to the competition anyway.

We’ve had competitors from other countries (including the USA) whinge about having to get up before ten and how the hotel sheets weren’t the right thread count, so needless to say, we were impressed.

After everything they had been through and after overcoming some technical glitches, we were extremely pleased to see this:

It’s obvious that the Japan contingent had a wonderful time, made lots of new friends, and is committed to participating in strength next Spring at RoboGames 2012.

Along with articles on Taylor Veltrop‘s awesome Kinect/ROS/Wii Frankensteinian humanoid action, there’s loads more about Robot Japan 1st and all the other great things which makes RoboCon reason enough in itself for us over her to run out and learn Japanese posthaste.

[Thanks a millions, Lem!]