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Everyone, this is Jaimie Mantzel, and he is about to blow your mind. More »
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Should you visit Tokyo's Takashimaya department store by Valentine's Day, you can greet Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's Geminoid-F android, who's engaged in a curiously forlorn bit of street theater. More »
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Make out with this pig robot, and its sensitive lips will transmit the same sensations to anyone you choose (as long as she or he also owns a mechanical kissing pig). Because nothing says "I'm perfectly happy alone in my house of 1,000 cats and jars of urine" like a robot pig you can French kiss. More »
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The quadrotors of the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Laboratory are all sorts of amazing (even when they're crashing). But this new footage of these futuristic bots hearkens back to something more retro — the pixelated shooters of arcades yore. More »
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This strange, short movie was created by the father of the muppets, Jim Henson. Filmed in 1963 for the Bell System this robot was used to lighten the mood at the big Bell conference. What they got was something completely Henson — and abnormally delightful. More »
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In the movies, technology is usually represented one of two ways: a hallelujah-worthy miracle or a soul-deadening trespass on the natural order of things. Robot and Frank, a film receiving near-unanimous praise at the Sundance Film Festival, is smart enough to know better. Technology, like everything in life, isn't black and white, and is only as good or bad as the people who interact with it. More »
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Hats off to YungHan Chang and Kimberly Knoll for directing this poetic short animation — titled No Robots — as a student project at San Jose State University. In this vignette, an anti-robot shopkeeper must deal with an unexpected clanking visitor. I'm absolutely loving the city design here — the animators deserved to pass in flying colors. More »
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Robot babies are generally all sorts of uncomfortable, but this animatronic tot takes the tungsten-exoskeletoned cake. YouTuber Kitanimboy, who has quite the experience building robotic children for Torchwood and ad campaigns, has recently unveiled this strange cyber-baby skeleton. He won't reveal what job it's for, and we're absolutely fine with that. More »
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The Aaron Sims Company has designed such celluloid creatures as the aliens from Green Lantern, the simians from Rise of The Planet of The Apes, and the samurai with the chain gun from Sucker Punch. Now, as a labor of love with no funding, Sims has directed Archetype, a short film about a battlefield robot whose programming is on the fritz. It's an absolutely stunning nugget of cinema. More »
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We're all bracing for a robot uprising. Any moment now, a computer could become self-aware and decide to wipe us out. Like Skynet. But really, you should be more scared of posthumans — like mutants or cyborgs. People whose direct ancestors are humans, but they've developed into... something else. More »
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The last decade of global conflict has seen the dawning of the age of the robot plane. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been around for decades, but today they're ubiquitous war machines with unmatched endurance and lethal combat capabilities. Find out more about these increasingly high-tech pilotless aircraft.

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I'm tempted to call it The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with robots, but Real Humans looks a bit more complicated than that. This TV show, called Äkta människor in Swedish, debuts in ten days, and here's the first trailer. Warning: Quite possibly NSFW, due to female robot nudity. And scenes of female robots being kidnapped and enslaved. More »
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Thought-provoking science fiction is in short supply on network TV in the U.S. — so it's a hopeful sign that NBC has ordered a pilot for Beautiful People. In this near-future-set show, human-appearing robots live among us, as the perfect slaves. What could possibly go wrong? More »
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Next week marks the annual return of that indie-movie orgy, Sundance! The film festival that helped launch cult classics such as TrollHunter and Moon is back. More »
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Even robots get the blues sometimes. When the Star Wars droids start feeling the ennui tugging at the edges of their consciousness, do they simply bottle up their melancholy? This series gives voice to their frustration. More »
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Remember the infamous scene in Speed where a bus jumps a fifty foot gap in an elevated freeway? Of course you do, because every physics teacher from that day on illustrated that moment as something that could never, ever happen. Although the freeway was elevated, the bus was careening down a flat section. It would have fallen down from the edge of the freeway the same way a ball rolling off the edge of a table would. Gravity doesn't care if you're going very fast. What's more, since the front section of the bus moved off the freeway first, it would have started falling while the back section of the bus was still being supported. This would have sent the bus into a spin, and if the fall were long enough it would have tumbled end over end into the ground. More »
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As soon as we have convincing(ish) androids and gynoids, we'll create pleasure-droids. And soon after that, those sex-machines will use their super-powerful thigh muscles to try and kill us. Here are ten examples of the sexy robot death that awaits you in the future. More »
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In a robot uprising, humanity still should have one slim hope: if we flee to the beaches, our robot overlords might fall over on the soft, shifting sand dunes. Now roboticists have solved that one robotic flaw. Gee, thanks, guys. More »
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There are eight million stories in the Future City; this is one of them. Copernicus Jones is your typical wise-cracking private eye: he's got a weakness for betting on sports games and he can't say no to a leggy dame with a fat pocketbook. But beneath the hat and trenchcoat, he's all robot. More »
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Feast your eyes on this stop-motion music video by animator Kevin Parry. The short took about six months to film, and required hundreds of paper cutouts, but we think you'll agree that Parry did a pretty great job serving up a splendid depiction of Earth's past, present and (possible) future. More »
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Remember that autonomous swarm of drones that built a 20-foot-tall indoor tower in Orléans, France? The FRAC Centre has now released a start-to-finish reel of the quadrotors completing the tower. You can watch the entire process above, fast-fowarded quite a bit. More »
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Lawyers and policy wonks with a futurist bent are advised to take note. The University of Miami School of Law is organizing a conference called "We Robot: Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics." They're seeking scholars, lawyers, and roboticists who want to discuss a topic that will probably be making headlines in a decade: How the law will regulate robots. The school bills the event as one of the first conferences of its kind. Attendees will "examine how the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield disrupts existing legal regimes or requires rethinking of various policy issues." More »
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Awww yeah, you thought we forgot about Saturday morning dance party here at Radio io9 (also known as "Radio9")? Hell no, we've just been disco-napping off the last one. More »
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Everybody wants to date a robot. They're hot and sexy, and they're programmed to protect human life above all other priorities — even seeing humans harming each other can cause robots' brains to melt. What could be better? But it turns out that dating between robots and humans is a social minefield — especially when a robot has a young three-day-old son, who needs to be taught what types of pornography are okay for a young robot. More »
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A little while back, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programmed its emergency automated voice service to warble a yuletide staple. Here's your cyber-chanteur's biography: More »
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Cute robots have been a fixture in the pop culture landscape, ever since C-3PO and R2D2 crashed on Tatooine in the original Star Wars — but there have been cute robots in pop culture for way longer. The history of cute robots is a proud and totally cuddly one, full of beeping, blooping noises. More »
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On December 2 in Orléans, France, a crew of four quadrocopters assembled a six-meter-tall tower using 1,500 foam blocks as part of the FRAC Centre's "Flight Assembled Architecture" exhibit. The project was a collaboration was helmed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, whose researchers had previously taught these flying machines to juggle ping-pong balls. More »
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Remember Ant-Roach, the inflatable robot that looked like the lovechild of a dildo and a wildebeest? Roboticists at Harvard have constructed an even weirder biomimetic balloon. This soft robot, which was developed by Harvard's Whiteside Research Group, takes its cues from pliable fauna like squid, starfish, and worms. According to its creators, "this robot is quadrupedal; it uses no sensors, only five actuators, and a simple pneumatic valving system that operates at low pressures (< 10 psi)." The only thing stopping this bots from squishy conquest is the air tube. More »
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Looking for an oil change? Need a snazzy new pair of hydraulic legs or a fresh coat of asbestos? Take a spin through Fraley's Robot Repair Shop, the one-stop shop for all your retro robot's needs. More »
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Randy Sarafan, who loves to recycle old pieces of technology for new uses, has created the awesome OCCU(PI) Bot, to help the 99% in their quest to protest. Sarafan writes: More »
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Meet Ant-Roach, Otherlab's pneumatic robot that weights 70 pounds and can support 1000 pounds of weight. It's not the most mobile vehicle out there, but when's the last time you were able to deflate a golf cart? Otherlab is also working on other "pneubotic" devices, like prosthetic arms that can lift several hundred pounds. You can read more about these devices at Hizook. More »
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This is So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi's "Senseless Drawing Robot," a vandalism machine that uses programming and its own momentum of spray the heck out of clean walls. More »
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Cheese on crackers, would it be fun to work at the eatART robotics collective in Vancouver. In addition to building awesomely biomimetic vehicles like Mondo Spider, they're currently working on Titanoboa, a mechanical recreation of the 50-foot-long, one-ton prehistoric snake of the same name. More »
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If you've been convinced for years that John Madden has been replaced by an iPod filled with generic football commentary, you might be excited to learn that Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne has been working on an even more advanced version. This one is equipped with artificial intelligence so it can actually see what's happening on the field and provide commentary. More »
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Combine years in the gaming community with access to 3D printers, and you get the business model of My Robot Nation. This small company helps you create customized robot avatars online — and then lets you print them out in ceramic, so your bot friends can join you in real life. More »
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Projection people aren't an entirely new phenomenon, but this Mask-bot — a new yammering robo-visage from German and Japanese researchers — was built to give robots emotive faces and to replace conference calls with talking heads. More »
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When we think of futuristic robots, impeccably shiny metal chassis, gleeful tinny voices, and other anthropomorphic accoutrements come to mind. More »
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From the same school of AI versus AI rib-tickling that brought you existentially ornery Cleverbots: some rousing logorrhea between a new-school smart phone and an old-school creepy fad. Next up, a TomTom tending to a Tamagotchi. More »
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You're looking at the most recent prototype of Japanese robotics manufacturer NSK's mechanical seeing-eye dog. This model uses Microsoft Kinect to navigate obstacles, and its creators are adding such features as voice recognition to prevent the robot from leading its master astray. Will future generations be dealing with these helper droids or the same trusty pup cloned ad infinitum? More »
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The ranks of wall-climbing robots are increasing in number. A team of Canadian engineers from Simon Fraser University have combined what they describe as gecko-inspired "fibrillar dry adhesives" with track wheels, to create a modular, tank-like robot that can scale walls and even transfer from horizontal to vertical surfaces with ease. More »
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