Therefore in honor of Valentine’s day, here are some robot pole dancers:

They were at The Big Day Out this year down under.

[Thanks sharp-eyed commenter Wiml, via JWZ]

Congrats to Kevin Pratt, our homie down in sunny Florida, for convincing the University of South Florida that he will not, in fact, use his power for evil, and filing his thesis on robotic search and rescue!



There will always be a place for you in our supervillain lair should you ever decide to come to the dark side, Kevin. We’ll let you sleep under the death ray.

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!]

In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

I am fully in favor of all of President Executron’s policies.

I just got a couple of videos anonymousishly IMed to me as a part of the Great CarNAYgie Mellon Conspiracy. Daniel H. Wilson, the “mild mannered” humorist and author of How To Survive A Robot Uprising is uses his perverse powers of reverse psychology to make us think he’s on the side of the humans. Hah. Tis video shows us differently by trying to lull us into a false sense of security.

Yes, it’s Keepon, the infamous, adorable, squishy, slightly testicular robot that is actually much more complex than one would think (even Mr. Robotics, jaded fuck that he is, admitted this). Don’t let Keepon’s cuteness fool you. He’ll be just as much a part of the revolution as Skynet.

Daniel Wilson is also shilling for his alma mater CarNAYgie Mellon with this spiffy splash page that shows of his videos and the work of the lovely Ali Spagnola, whom we have previously covered.

I almost went to CarNAYgie Mellon once. I wanted to move to Pittsburgh and be a Penguins fan. Alas, it was not to be, I only made it into H&SS and not engineering or drama. Bastards.

So this is all over the place now, but I am spreading the joy of a Kuka-powered trebuchet to you, our extremely bored readers. See the beauty. Watch the innovation. Get all sweaty and hot about Science.

The disclaimer is the really awesome part.

If you’ll remember, that particular Kuka model also has been known to drop phat beats and scrizzatch them mad rhymes.

[via Botjunkie via Hackaday via Manapotions]

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.

This is great. Some folks built a filter bot to detect stupid comments.

Q: Isn’t filtering stupidity elitist?
A: Yes. Yes, it is. That’s sort of the whole point.

Q:Won’t people just try to defeat the filter, the way spammers try to get around spam filtering?
A: We certainly hope they will — that implies they’re no longer generating text statistically likely to be stupid.

We hopes version 2.0 can has flamethrower

Concentrated Stupid: Here’s a random stupid comment detected by the method. Keep clicking for concentrated supidity, LOLZ ROTFLMAO!!

Warren Ellis channels all robots, everywhere, when he repackages the Three Laws:

Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan?

[Thanks Matt! (via Le Boing)]

. . .is, of course, the noble squid. My personal favorite species is Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, but Laughing Squid has alerted us to Royal Deluxe’s “Le Calmar Géant à Rétropropulsion“:

It’s a steampunk-tastic inspirational ride-on piece that fits with Royal Deluxe’s mechanical interactive giant mobile street theater aesthetic. Another thing that made me feel all intelligent is the fact that we noticed that the squid moves down the track tentacles-first, which seems confusing until you remember that tentacles-first is, of course, backwards for a squid.

[This post dedicated to Dr. Jen Gittzus, Squid Goddess YC SY '98, who is not dead but also probably not reading this page either. Hi Gittzus.]

Cybestein Robots of the UK has a great appearance robot, Titan.

This is the best puppeteering I’ve seen. There’s still a guy inside the suit, but the verisimilitude is really good!

Click the photo for a nice video.

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.

Futurist Paul Saffo expounds on why you should never, ever be allowed to drive a motor vehicle, ever:

Move Over, the Robot’s Driving: By the Year 2050, Forecasters Predict Robots Will Rule the Road

(Mr. Robotics already thinks I should never be allowed to drive a motor vehicle, ever, under any circumstances. Also, it should be made illegal for me personally to parallel park.)

[Thanks Paul!]