Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie started off dramatically. We cringed as we watched a hapless Pleo get disemboweled by a ComBot at Maker Faire, felt a little better watching a few more ComBot matches where ComBots fought ComBots, checked out some footage of the new Wall-E Ultimate Robot toy, drooled over an auction of beautiful vintage robot toys with their fantastic original boxes, chuckled over a new Wall-E video involving a our favorite animated bot gettin’ jiggy with pair of headphones, were less than impressed but mildly amused by a robotic card dealer, got wowed by a robot that you (yes, you!) can teach how to make a bitchin’ omelette, mused a little bit on the Pleo community and Ugobe’s reaction to our video of the destruction of the Pleo by a ComBot, and ended the week with a segment from FutureWeapons on the Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS.

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By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we happily watched a new Wall-E vignette involving a pesky magnet, saw some little Mobot line followers competing on a complicated course at Carnegie Mellon, pondered the ramifications of robots getting robot servants of their very own, cringed sympathetically when a modular robot got destroyed by a swift kick to the crotch and than got jealous when it put itself back together, decided to withhold judgment on the new Wall-E robot toys until we see them in person (which should happen… tomorrow), got introduced to CrabFu SwashBot’s bigger brother SwashBot2, also got introduced to Clear Cut Robot’s same-size and equally badass brother Disaster Relief Robot, and finally, chilled out to a soothing video of Festo’s AirJelly robotic jellyfish.

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By Evan Ackerman

Over on BotJunkie this week, we kicked things off in style and watched some video of a cute little DIY CrabFu SwashBot take on an equally cute kitty in a battle of weirdness, got a little misty hearing about how an RP-7 robot was used to introduce a soldier in Iraq to his newborn son in Texas for the first time, saw an incredible POV video of a Georgian reconnaissance UAV being allegedly shot down by a Russian MiG-29, got a chuckle out of a slightly dirty robot t-shirt, were impressed by the ability of autonomous robots to map a maze of debris and locate simulated babies, watched a live robot-assisted surgery that was webcast on Thursday night, got a kick out of a robot that looks like a little blue elephant with a little yellow hat designed to give your urinals a good scrubbing, saw some humanoid robots going to town on each other (and preparing for the future) in a game of laser tag, got introduced to the Clear Cut firefighting robot who has giant saws for arms, and wrapped things up with a clip of remote controlled Japanese robots running some plays of what they call American-style football.

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By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie, we started off by watching some video of a new robotics kit modeled after a canine rather than a humanoid, realized that turning robots on and off can be a huge pain in the ass if you’ve got 100 of them running around, tried to picture the robotic orbs spotted at Yuri’s Night running over hippies at Burning Man, were not impressed by a quadrapedal robotic trash can that was almost but not quite the stupidest robot of 2007, got an update about the TALON SWORDS armed battlebots telling us that they’re still in Iraq but the government doesn’t really know what to do with them, oohed and aahed over a robotic arm with an integrated infrared laser cannon that’s used to spot weld metal, added a Cyberdyne powered exoskeleton to the list of things we really really want now that they’re starting to get produced, met a robotic cat that plays chess and tells dumb dog jokes, were impressed by the underwater alacrity of Finnegan the robotic turtle, and dipped into the change jar to buy an awesome t-shirt with 51 robots on it including The Wrong Trousers and Wall-E.

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By Evan Ackerman

If you aren’t checking BotJunkie every day, you’re guaranteed to be among the first to be assimilated when the robots take over. We got introduced to some gigantic CV08 robots that will use chubby suburbanites as fuel when they reseed urban Australia with wildlife, saw a new solar powered pool cleaning robot to compete with the iRobot Verro, snorted at Hal the robotic hamster toy who dances to Styx, got a little creeped out by insects that have been modified with implants to turn them into remote controlled cyborgs, were impressed by some new video showcasing the SuperBot modular robot(s), found out that the super cute Paro therapeutic harp seal pup is now for sale in the US (but the poignant video may make you glad you don’t need one), admired some 3D renders of little lightbulb bots from Andre Kutscherauer, learned what sort of toilet paper robots use, questioned the wisdom of pulling TALON SWORDS combat robots out of Iraq due to safety concerns, and saw a video of a KUKA industrial robot arm that’s controlled with a Wiimote and swings tennis rackets. And swords.

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By Evan Ackerman

On BotJunkie this week, we started things off with a video of a robotic chair that you control by pointing where you want it to go, heard with a raised eyebrow or two that WowWee’s Robosapien is going to be starring in a feature film, started caring about car racing when we learned that there’s going to be an unmanned event at this year’s Toyota Grand Prix featuring winners of the DARPA Urban Challenge, acquiesced to the demands of NASA’s Dextre robot that it now be referred to as “Dextre the Magnificent,” saw an impressive demonstration of Nexi, a robot from the MIT Media Lab who’s mobile and dexterous and social, were impressed by the drawing skills of hexapod robot from Micromagic Systems, totally trumped Andrew by posting a YouTube video of Daisy, the giant robotic propeller of death, and found out that your Roomba may be just the thing you need to get rid of your ant infestation.

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By Evan Ackerman

This week over on BotJunkie, we started out by meeting a little Lego Mindstorms bot named Phobot who’s terrified of big things, found out that it’s a lot easier to give commands to robots if they’re capable of making smalltalk, took a look at a flying robot toy that you control with your hand, saw an awesome video of a little bot that wanders around with a pair of drumsticks and plays rhythms on whatever it bumps into, decided that we probably didn’t want to pay $5 for robot art made out of a small wooden block even if it’s quirky, questioned whether the new and improved version of BattleBots returning to ESPN2 is really new and improved, waxed philosophical about NASA’s recent threat to scrap one of the Mars Exploration Rovers (and enjoyed a bunch of cool Mars rover pics), checked out a round robot from Toshiba that wants to be your new voice activated universal remote, and lastly, nearly lost it while watching a spoof of BigDog’s latest antics.

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You might remember Robosaurus, created 17 years ago by Monster Robots in Southern California. The 40-foot-high, 31-ton behemoth quickly became famous for crushing cars and breathing fire all over the country, before dwelling in the land of obscurity. Apparently, it’s current owner or owners are finally sick of burning and crushing all manner of large things. Robosaurus will be auctioned off…

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By David Ponce

Our own Evan is in San Francisco, covering Arse Elektronika, an Austrian sex and technology seminar. One of the first exhibits of the show was “F**Zilla”, a robotic sex machine outfitted with a conveyor belt made of tongues (called “Lick A Chick”) and other teledildonic implements. Straddling the fence between stupid and stupider, it still makes for interesting reading. Evan even got a video of a girl called “Binx”… trying out F**Zilla. Yeah, it’s totally NSFW, so you’ve been warned. But she’s behind a curtain, so it’s not completely smutty. But I bet she’s faking every second of it.

Still, don’t watch this video at work. Or school.

We’ll be bringing you more coverage of the show in the next few days, but for now, I’m pasting a link to the first article below.

[ BotJunkie At ArseElektronika ]