<![CDATA[io9: cute robots]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: cute robots]]> http://io9.com/tag/cuterobots http://io9.com/tag/cuterobots <![CDATA[Wall-E Versus The Shopping-Cart Army]]> You may know all about Wall-E the cute robot's aeons of tedium on an abandoned Earth, and you may even have glimpsed his torrid love affair... but do you know about his valiant battle with a platoon of shopping carts? The full trailer for Disney/Pixar's robo-classic in the making just went online, and it shows just how textured and detailed the outer-space worldbuilding in Wall-E will be. You also get a glimpse of the humans, swollen and atrophied from years in space.

You can also view the trailer in HD at Apple.

]]>
http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=366733&view=rss&microfeed=true
<![CDATA[The Robots That Launched The Cute-Bot Revolution]]> Wall-E may be the cutest lil robot ever to hit our screens, but he's also the latest in a long line. It seems like wherever you go in scifi, you have to step over a cute chirpy little bot, who whistles, or tweets out a little catchphrase — including R2D2 from Star Wars, Twiki from Buck Rogers and K-9 from Doctor Who. The cute-robot trend may have taken off in the late 70s, but it really began with 1972's Silent Running, as you can see from the clip above. Click through to find out how Bruce Dern's little robot friends changed science fiction forever.

I totally want a cute robot that comes and picks up after me when I've crashed out drunk on the floor of my floating space-forest. Right after the scene of Bruce Dern collapsing, the robots take him to the surgery and give him really good drugs through a nose/mouth mask, while they patch him up. And they become his robo-poker buddies. So it's totally sad that one of the three robots gets whooshed out to space before Bruce gets around to naming them Huey, Dewey and Louie.

Silent Running was supposed to be sort of a follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey and shares the same slow contemplative pace and majestic visuals. (Its director, Douglas Trumbull, was special effects supervisor on 2001.)

But really, it's only remembered for Huey, Dewey and Louie now. There had been funny robots before Silent, like Robbie from Forbidden Planet, and vaguely cool robots, like Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still. But nobody had the technology to make little robots, or even robots that didn't look like a guy in a suit. What was the miracle advancement that allowed Silent Running to solve this problem? Amputees. Four bilateral amputees took turns playing the four "sweet-tempered" robots. With Wall-E, Huey and Dewey's time has finally come.. which is sort of fitting, since Silent Running takes place in the distant year of 2008.

]]>
http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=363374&view=rss&microfeed=true