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Posts Tagged “

Robots

robots

Dance, Robot Snake Girl, Dance!

A ballerina from the English National Ballet dances next to a two-meter-high robot snake, which looks every bit as graceful as she does. Maybe the future of robotics isn't dancing little humanoids or cute puppies, but a nice sinuous snake that can slither around your house cleaning your floors and picking up after you. They could be standard equipment in every home within a few years. Click through for more cool robot images from the Streetwise Robots event at the London Science Museum's Dana Centre. More »

mad medicine

Robot Surgeons to put Human Docs out of Work

The next time you have to go under the knife, a robot may be doing the cutting. Engineers at Duke University are pushing the envelope of cutting edge surgery with a robot arm they've built that can perform simple procedures all by itself. The system guides itself using 3-d ultrasound imaging as its eyes, and has shown it can accurately guide two needle probes through tissue in a simulated biopsy and blood vessel graft. The bot's still in its experimental phase, but ultrasound specialist Stephen Smith and his research team believe the day is near when robots will autonomously conduct surgery without the need for human guidance. More »

artificial mouth

Killer Robots Can Now Eat Us and Enjoy the Flavor

A new artificial mouth will allow robots to snack on our tasty human flesh. French scientists have developed a way for robots to simulate the act of eating and tasting, using pointy artificial teeth combined with the proper chemical and environmental conditions found inside a mouth, including fake saliva. What's the use of such a device? More »

sci fashion

Superheroes And Cyborgs Are The Height Of Fashion

Fashionistas and A-List actors showed up to celebrate superheroes and armored cyborgs at last night's Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Met is paying tribute to superheroes and crazy outfits with its new exhibit "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy." The Costume Gala is where fashion meets, costume and celebrity to form the most ridiculous apex of avant-guard attire, so a superhero tribute makes perfect sense. A full gallery of the night after the jump. More »

cute robo-ninjas

MechaSquirrel Leads BioSquirrels to Victory Over the Humans

While Japan gets ready to become the world's most robot-friendly nation, the United States is more interested in helping integrate robots into rodent society. Hence the creation of robo-squirrel Rocky at Hampshire College in Massachusetts (pictured), where researchers are studying whether the robot's squirrelly ways will allow it to mingle with the fully-biological, acorn-chomping natives. More »

robots

Meet McSleepy, the World's First Robot Anesthesiologist

Anesthesiologists are required to participate in every surgery, standing by to administer drugs and monitor the patient's vital signs while surgeons do their jobs. But now a group of researchers at Montreal's McGill University have invented a device that could replace human anesthesiologists with robots in the next five years. An anesthesia bot called McSleepy has just successfully completed its first surgery, administering drugs to a patient undergoing a tumor removal on his kidney. More »

mangobot

Meet the Man Who Predicted Japan's Humanoid Robot Craze

Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. In the spring of 1988, Japanese publisher Kodansha released a revealing English-language book titled Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia. The book predicted a new era when humanoid robots would dominate Japanese society in the same way that industrial robots were then dominating behind-the-scenes manufacturing in the country. It was a topic that nobody in the Western world knew much about at all. The author, Frederik L. Schodt, was a freelance interpreter from Washington, DC who lived in Japan as a kid and traveled extensively between the Japan and the US—often as a private interpreter for Tezuka Osamu, the God of manga (Japanese comic books). And he predicted a social trend that was nearly beyond comprehension in the 1980s. More »

robotics engineering

Robots Learn By Doing Improv

Your household robot won't just clean and make repairs, it will come up with clever, novel solutions to problems by improvising. This hallmark of artificial intelligence is a little closer to reality thanks to a robot named Kurt3D. In a recent test, Kurt3D figured out how to activate a switch and open a door by improvising, using a limited set of instructions. The key to this A.I. breakthrough is a new way of teaching computers about objects by teaching them what something is for rather than simply what it is. More »

found footage

The Best Abstract Giant Robot Ever

I am convinced that this giant robot, from the 1957 movie Kronos: Ravager of Planets, is perhaps the very best of the abstract giant robots. And by "abstract," I mean Kronos here looks basically like a modernist building — just a big box on giant struts with a spherical head topped by two antennae. Sure there's some backstory here, like a flying saucer crashed in Mexico and suddenly there was this giant robot who is mind-controlling everybody so it can eat electricity or atomic bombs or something. Really, though, all you need to know is that there is a hulking robot building thing roaming the countryside, and being followed by three intrepid robot geeks wearing awesome coveralls that say "Labcentral" on the back. Damn, I want those coveralls. And that abstract giant robot! Here I've put together the very best of the giant robot scenes for you. Watch Kronos from far away, from up close, and in full burnination mode! [Kronos via IMDB]

concept art

Prosthetic Commando

This is a Prostethetic Commando, a robot whose processor is a human brain taken from a felled soldier or police officer. Generally, the PC guards dignitaries at public functions. I didn't make that up — the artist behind this trippy bot, Keith Thompson, did. He's got an amazing gallery on his website, with each image containing enough backstory to build into your next game campaign, or your next movie. More »

triviagasm

The Most Badass Robot Army Dream Team

We've talked about the toughest scifi soldiers, but those were made out of blood, muscle and bone. What about their robotic counterparts? It's goes without saying that if the Bot Army met the Meat Popsicle Army, the robots would clean house. If you had access to unlimited funds and a lot of time-traveling doohickeys, then you'd want to put together a lineup like our dream team robot army. We've assembled them below for your pleasure. More »

wall-e

What Does Wall-E Have To Hide?

We've watched the trailers for Pixar's upcoming cute-bot movie Wall-E a zillion times, but we still had lingering questions. Like, why is Wall-E so alone at the start of the movie? What happened to all the other robots? Is Wall-E really as nice as he seems, or is there a hidden sociopathic side to the postapocalyptic robot? And a few other questions that we won't mention, for fear of spoilering people who've avoided even the first trailer. Anyway, a new featurette answers a lot of our questions with some narration by director Andrew Stanton, and also shows off a decent amount of footage we haven't seen before. More »

robotics engineering

Does Artificial Intelligence Require Artificial Emotion?

You might like it when your Tivo predicts what you want to watch, but you probably don't think that makes it intelligent. But what if your Tivo could cheer for a game, or cry with you when you're watching a poignant death scene in Battlestar Galactica? Researchers with the HUMAINE project are studying machine/human emotional interactions, and they're asking this very question. In essence, will people consider their machines intelligent when those machines can express what appear to be feelings? More »

icky sexbots

The Creepiest Sex Robots In Mass Media Right Now

Ashton Kutcher posed as a robot being "tested" by his creator, in this photoshoot for vMan magazine with famous photographer Mario Testino. (See gallery below, completely with weirdly exaggerated robo-package in his briefs.) He says he got the idea from a Gatorade ad in which someone's being tested for their physical performance, and then he started thinking, what if God could test us, his creations, to see if we're fulfilling our function? And then somehow that led to him thinking about a robot being tested by his actual creator. Actually, his explanation is less cogent than that. But actually, Ashton's only the third creepiest and most inappropriately sexy robot in mass media at the moment. Want to see the two that are worse? More »

tomo

Trapped On An Ice Planet With A Robot That's Freaking Out

Robots in science fiction TV and movies either move super gracefully, or slowly and jerkily, as if their joints need to be oiled. But I've never seen a robot that moves like the helper robot in Tomo, a Sundance-winning short film: angrily and spamodically, like a drunk person throwing a fit. Despite the fact that Tomo's name means "friend," and he's there to help you, he looks like a robot you wouldn't want to get within a hundred yards of. Tomo is being made into a full-length feature film. Click through for details, and a clip from the original short. More »

retro futurism

Shoe Store of the Future Replaces Brannock Device With Robot

You know you want to see it in all its sexy robotic glory, so click through. P.S. What's a Brannock device, you say? It's that foot-measuring doohickey you didn't realize had such a noble name. More »

robots

Mixed Marriage for Robot Bride and Groom

This robot couple would make a perfect wedding cake topper or table decoration. As you can see, the robots getting married are two completely different races—perhaps even different species—symbolizing the fact that robots, too, can attain love that transcends differences. The robots are made mostly of wood glazed with silver and bronze. The flowers and the stems are made of metal. [Etsy via Neatorama]

surrogates

Bruce Willis Will Play Robocop -- Sort Of

Some more details have come out about Surrogates, the robo-Bruce Willis we covered a while back. Based on a graphic novel, Surrogates takes place in 2054, when humans live in isolation and interact using idealized robot versions of themselves (which they control with their minds.) Willis plays a cop — but don't call him Robocop. Click through for more details. More »