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

Seriously, how has no one thought of this earlier? Aside,of course, from the whole “oh my god I just lost my finger” thing:

Geek Replaces Lost Finger With 2GB USB Finger

A Finnish programmer who lost his finger in a motorcycle accident has now replaced it with a prosthetic finger that has a USB drive built in. Jerry Jalava can now peel back his “nail” and reveal a 2GB “finger drive” for storing photos, movies and software.

Jalava had his left ring finger amputated last summer after crashing into a deer with his motorbike near the Finnish capital Helsinki. Given his profession as a computer programmer, the doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive” and Jalava went for the idea.

[Thanks Vexed Magazine! (we found this through their twitter feed, which we have had for a while now.]

Mr. Robotics has conned the Revision3 Guys into letting him in on another robot-oriented episode of Systm! Not only can you learn how to play effectively with a Hi-Tec RoboNova, but you can also understand why Roger Chang, the producer, must have celestial amounts of patience on these shoots.

(Video embedded after the jump, this is for all you cats out there watching on tiny, tiny mobile devices. James Young, I’m looking at you.)

For a Robonova of your very own, check out The RoboGames Systm RoboNova page.

(more…)

Moller International seem to be trying their darndest to make good on that whole Jetsons-flying-car future that we were all promised back in the ’60s.

It all sounds like pie to me:

From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 275 MPH (maximum speed of 375 MPH) and achieve up to 20 miles per gallon on clean burning, ethanol fuel. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility.

Operators require a pilot’s license, and probably and airfield and a flight plan and a tower and safety equipment and some other stuff, but other than that it’s *just* like a car.

The Volantor is available for purchase, get in the first 500 delivery positions for a mere-smear $10,000 deposit!

Deposit is refundable until after a successful transitioning flight has occurred. Thereafter deposits are refundable only if Final Delivery Price exceeds List Price (as adjusted for CPI-W) by 5%, OR Standard Equipment List has been shortened OR Guaranteed Performance Specifications are not met, OR FAA Certification Date of the M400 Skycar occurs after December 31

Check out the video on the Moller website.

I am excited about the flying car, because the advancement of the flying car means that people will stop asking about &%$ Rosie sooner rather than later.


[via Gizmag]

For those of you sitting around doing frak-all with your Saturday night (like me), I present an oldie but a goodie:

From RoboCentral:

AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion. At the centre of the AquaJelly is a watertight, laser-sintered pressure vessel. This comprises a central, electric drive, two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, the charge control device and the servo motors for the swashplate.

Auf Deutch von Festo.com.

[via DesignNews]

Those wacky Germans. They’ve done away with human waiters. Replaced them with robots.

From the BBC:

Germany likes to call itself the “Land of Ideas” - and over the centuries it has certainly had plenty of them. It was Germans who invented the aspirin, the airship, the printing press and the diesel engine.

But Germany has surely never produced anything quite as weird as the automated restaurant. I say “restaurant” - but it actually looks more like a rollercoaster, with long metal tracks criss-crossing the dining area. The tracks run all the way from the kitchen, high up in the roof, down to the tables, twisting and turning as they go. And down the tracks - in little pots with wheels fixed to the bottom - speeds food.

Supersonic sausages, high-pace pancakes and wine bottles whizzing down to the customers’ tables with the help of good old gravity. One pot is spiralling down so fast, it looks like an Olympic bobsleigh (but it’s only Bratwurst).

What’s more, at the ’s Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg, you don’t need waiters to order food. Customers use touch-screen TVs to browse the menu and choose their meal.

You can even use the computers to send e-mails and text messages while you wait for the food to be cooked. But all this may not appeal to those who like traditional waiter service.

Here’s a spiffy thing sent along by the irrefutable Amacker Bullwinkle:

“My friend Mikey is on the crew that just did Nexi. . .his girlfriend Neri, is Nexi’s voice.”

Who the heck is Nexi? I hear you cry. Well:

And by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

I love those crazy kids down at the MIT Media Lab.

Robot Evolution May be Mirroring The Evolution of Life

According to [Han Moravec, founder of the CarNAYgie Mellon's Robotics Institute], our robot creations are evolving similar to how life on Earth evolved, only at warp speed. By his calculations, by mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, will be beyond the scope of robots.

Well? Go on, discuss. . .you in the back there, speak up.

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.

A classroom full of gobsmacked schoolchildren was treated to a lesson in English taught by Tiro, a robot developed by Hanjool Robotics Crop and programmed with the will to destroy young minds ability to interact on the fly and keep the kids’ attention completely riveted to their teacher.

Tiro asked in English questions such as: “How many giraffes are there on the board?” It also displayed the name of the next student to participate in a role-playing task on the screen on its chest.

Korea’s dedication to becoming a world leader in the imminent surge of robotics technology should teach a thing or two to the US, who has not yet gotten a clue about robotics in any really meaningful government-supported way. Korea’s building a whole freakin’ district for robots, called “Robot World” and aims to have a robot in every home by 2020. We’re talking Rosie the Robot here, kids.

They also have nationwide free wireless. What a country.

[via Robots.net]

So cunning, so delicate:

Next weekend, those irrepressible Wieners from Monochrom, as well as the usual cast of San Francisco freaks, bring you Arse Elektronika 2007, along with a panel of luminaries including Slashdong (but of course!) and other accomplished hackers. What are they hacking? Well, we note in particular the following session as of interest to SB readers:

Pornomechanics: Sex Robots and the Mechanisms of Love

This presentation will begin with a viewing of the film “Love Machine” (2001), directed by Peter Asaro. This independently produced feature length documentary looks at the development of robots capable of entering human social relations of love, caring, and friendship. It also explores the social interests and fears surrounding their potential as sexual partners, augmenting or replacing human sexual interactions.

It features interviews with leading roboticists, philosophers, sexologist and inventors, including: Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec, Ken Goldberg, Hubert Dreyfus, Daniel Dennett, Manuel Delanda, Carol Queen, Robert Morgan Lawrence, Ernest Green, Lisa Palac, and others.

Following the film will be a discussion between film maker Peter Asaro and technology theorist Katie Vann, as well as an opportunity for audience questions.

The Rotor is old enough by now that he shouldn’t be embarrassed by stuff like this, but still is sometimes.

Okay, so we know Lem covered this waaay back in 2005, but we were very excited to see Kiyomori up close and personal.

Kiyomori is made by Tmsuk, which specializes in heavy work robots and robots that perform functions unsuitable for living things. Kiyomori is Tmuk’s flagship robot, developed with the Atsuo Takanishi research lab of Waseda University (go bears!). Kiyomori was built specifically to further human/robot interaction, at least this is what they would have us believe. We believe that with that warrior stance, those gleaming red eyes, and that fine fine Samurai garb, Kiyomori is bent on assuming the position of chief human administrator, just like the original Kiyomori did. By human administrator, we mean of course, administrator of humans, not administrator who is human. Please.

I dunno if this has been posted before, but it’s one of my all time favorite robots:

Eat your heart out, Michael Bay.

We have the technology, we can rebuild him. . .

Greetings to the i-Limb by Touch Bionics. Juan Arredondo, a soldier injured in Iraq, is one of the first beneficiaries of the i-Limb, and from what it looks like he’s thrilled with the replacement (though it probably would have been nice to not need it in the first place).

Here’s Touch Bionics’ profile of Sgt. Arredondo.