Hurray for the fine folks at Makerbot, making 3d extrusion printing the new cool thingy.

Chiggity check out the livestream here!

And I must really love Willow Garage because I am sick as a dog and should be in bed, yet I find myself compelled to note that PR2s are OMG totes available for consumer sale. But just to be frustrating I am linking to my friend Noriko Kageki’s fine, fine blog Get Robo, which has ALL the news on this – as long as you read Japanese.

[Thanks everybody on Twitter to contributing to my Lazy Blogger complex. I will take comfort in the fact that we are way more fun and pinker to read.]

This is cool if only for the head control thing, and the ability to annihilate the people in the cube next to you.

Incidentally, SRL did the head control thing with the Air Launcher way that many years ago, but if you have FREAKIN’ LAZZORS and the will to destroy you tend to always be ahead of the curve.

[Thanks Botjunkie!]

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.

Here’s a really well done minidocumentary about robot builders, done up by our buds at Trossen Robotics. Edited and shot by Jennero Rossi, a Trossen Minion, valuable helper at RoboGames and a hell of a great guy, this short illustrates what it is to be a robot builder, where it can take you, and how you don’t need to be a PhD or engineer to get started.

Full Disclosure: Trossen Robotics is one of the dedicated long time sponsors for RoboGames, so please buy some robot stuff from them. Then come to RoboGames to test it out!

Mechanical Victorians -Mechtorians- look great in drawings, paintings, prints and prototypes. They also raise the bar for production-run, high end, limited edition vinyl toys.

Bruce Whistlecraft, aka Doktor A, employs an array of olde and nu skool craftsmanships to take the entire cast of fictional robots on a time-bending fantasmutational romp.

I’m completely charmed by the imagery from an actual past, informed by a recent past, reconfigured as robot characters from the past’s alternative future. Check it out for yourself.

Cris Rose has so many talent chops, that I’m thinking about writing this post in a spreadsheet.

Artist, Designer, Fabricator, Collaborator, Customizer, Collector Whew! He’s busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest who designs, builds and sends original robot toys all over the world to collectors and galleries. Though the figures have no traditional “working parts”, they do have incredibly believable details and lovely backstories. Cris is particularly interested in the relationship between robots and nature, and each character shows its wear and tear with pride. I hope to catch up with Cris soon and find out more about his robots, their histories and the art of decay.

Moreover, this was built by RoboGames Regular and Lego aficionado extraordinaire, Steve Hasseplug

You can see MonsterChess in action at Brickworld 2010 this weekend in Chicago.

Kazu Terasaki, longtime SB friend colleague and contributor, comes at us with a new variation on a familiar theme:

iPad walking robot!
\

Whee.

[Thank Lem!]

Contrary to popular belief, @cozyrobot did not spring fully formed from the skull of a Mighty Mech.

Au contraire, my 5 fingered friends, the Cozy was clearly an emergent property of devoted time on robot tasks large and small, real and surreal, virtual and hopeful, over the course of many years… 2 decades to be precise… Pull up a fuel can and I’ll tell you a little about myself and some things I’ve seen and done along the way.

While spending all my free time in the throes of spectacular machine performance art at SRL, Seemen, Ape Technology (formerly PeopleHater), and other local performance groups, I was also developing mad skillz painting teeny tiny toy prototypes. The most memorable were the about to be discontinued Zbots and Mini ZBots (pictured above with a custom chrome finish*), which were mass produced by the now defunkt Galoob Toys in South San Francisco from ’92-’94. Some designs were developed thru ’96, but, sadly, that last series was never produced.

An idea for a mass produced toy product goes through many development stages before it’s available at a chain or novelty store. Earlier stages develop initial concepts of what the object will look like, and how it will behave. Later stages involve engineering spec sheets, and manufacturing master prototypes. In the marketing department, there are models made to be photographed for advertising. Long before any manufacturing can occur, the company needs to know how many to make. They pre-sell to buyers (stores) with TV commercials, trade show displays and magazine cut sheets. The models used for these are called Heroes. I painted hundreds of toy and packaging Heroes in the mid to late ’90′s for a variety of toy companies in the Bay Area.

I’m telling you all this to share an appreciation I developed for the amount of detail and design work that goes into toy making, and in particular, figure models.

In the early 00′s, with the introduction of DIY customizable vinyl figure toys by Kidrobot, there has been a steady widening pool of talented artists who specialize in highly original toy figures. Many are one of a kind or limited editions from 2-10, or upwards of 1000.

I’ll be showcasing some artists that I believe are doing fantastic robot designs and hope to inspire more of you to consider the range of robot building going on these days. Love ‘em or fear them, robots are deeply embedded in our work, play and our imaginations.

*(custom chrome finish on ZBot and Mini ZBot done in 2000, while working on the movie Bicentennial Man. Quote from model shop “We have seen the future, and it is chromed!”)

Who doesn’t like coffee, coffee making, a robot with pony tails and a jaunty instrumental driving it along? I’m afraid I may watch this a few thousand times and fall into a virtual caffeinated stupor. Can’t read the text on mujakiclockwork’s youtube page or on clockwork.shikisokuzekuu.net, but I gather the robot’s name is Hina. There are a few pix on the blog suggesting Hina’s fabricational history. Could be my new BFF! If you have any further insight into this delightful creature, please let us know. My Moccamaster KBT 741 is pining for an introduction.

I really like this senselessly sweet and adorably interactive robot project, so much so that I am contemplating digging around in the the garage and building one, because we don’t have enough projects around here.

From the Guardian UK:

Meet the Guardian Robot: This friendly little fellow stands on your desk and monitors your Twitter feed for “happy” and “sad” posts by your friends on your Twitter feed. But unlike conventional alert systems, this robot encourages you to interact with the posts it finds.

• You can follow the Guardian Robot on its own Twitter account at http://twitter.com/guardianrobot. Send him a message with a “#highfive” hashtag to get a high five, or send him a “#ineedahug” hashtag if you are feeling low.

You can also see the Guardianbot live over the magical interwebs (when he is broadcasting) here!

(via Makezine!)

A long time ago (well, 30 years ago), in a Midwestern state far, far away (well, 3700 miles away), I was a young boy who dreamed of robots. While my sweet mother bought me an Intellivision (so much better than Atari. Loved that talking B-17 bomber game), what I really wanted was a robot. Not some silly wind up robot. No, a real one. Of course I knew that R2-D2′s level of intelligence was far off, but still, a robot would be cool. And you could get a robot. There was a fantastic Japanese company, Tomy, that made real robots, called OmniBots.

Alas, I never did get an Omnibot and still don’t have one, even though I now own around 200 robots (no really. 14 humanoids alone. Two life-sized R2-D2′s. Twelve omni-wheeled soccer bots. My wife must love me…). But a guy can reminisce. And what with the internets and databases and all, I can surf for all the robots that I missed out on as a kid:

Tomy Bots via [le Boing]

I promise you this is not another mere-smear BS YouTube embed just to say we’ve posted when we actually are only posting a BS Youtube embed.

Okay so maybe it could kind of lok that way but it’s cool because tis is abkut US! As in, it’s about RoboGames, the li’l shindig we throw in June or thereabouts in San Francisco.

Bill Sherman, robot builder extraordinaire, always sets up a nifty time lapse camera at RoboGames to capture the arena build and all sorts of other silliness. He has included footage he took of some of the art bot mezzanine as well. Tel him how neat he is and thank him for putting this up.

[BTW, hello to all those coming from Neatorama through the Rotor's last post, we weren't expecting guests to please forgive us if we're scrambling around to tidy things up.]

Have you always wanted to be part of the world domination “in” crowd? Do you get your celebrity gossip from Popular Mechanics? Does five gallons of motor oil, three car batteries and a set of alligator clips turn you on?

Boy do we have a party for you. Join ComBots, Laughing Squid and the Robotics Society of America for a night out to benefit this year International RoboGames. Guzzle tasty beverages made by your favorite robot bartenders, see works in progress and other junk made out of art, and hobnob with some of the leading lights of robotic society.

Get a martini from a robot!
Buy great robot art!
Drive a combat robot!
Get a robot-made roasted mashmallow (made w/a flame thrower!)

image courtesy Scott Beale.

Door charge is a sliding scale, all proceeds go to making RoboGames 2009 better than ever! Give til it hurts. We do.

Follow http://twitter.com/robogames for the latest updates.

Saturday, May 9, 2009, 7:00pm-2am
Secret Location