The snake-bot is the work of Merlin Robotics, Nottingham Trent University and the Edinburgh College of Art. Also on display: the Shadow Robot company's dextrous hand robot, which uses 40 Air Muscles to achieve 24 movements. It's the most advanced robot hand on Earth. (At first, the Getty Images captions were a tad confusing, and made it seem as though the dextrous hand was part of the robot snake. Which conjured some frankly bizarre mental images.)

Images by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

Together with the recent development of an automatic anesthesia machine, the automated robot surgeon presents an eerie prospect for the operating room of tomorrow: it may be completely uninhabited by people except you, the patient. Perhaps a technician will look on from behind a two-way mirror; perhaps not.

There's a long way to go before that happens. For example, robots will have to learn to adapt to unforeseen complications during surgery. But what would you think if the OR at your local hospital looked more like an assembly line at General Motors and less like a place where people are healed? Would you trust a robot to cut you apart then sew you back up, good as new?

Source: PhysOrg

Image: Medgadget

If you want to analyze taste, you can't just perform a chemical analysis of the food. Taste as experienced by humans includes the physical changes food undergoes as it is chewed (increasing surface area), chemical reactions with enzymes in our saliva, and volatile compounds that reach our olfactory receptors. This new artificial mouth is an attempt to take all these factors into account and create a situation very similar to what happens to food in a human mouth.

Why? It could be a first step toward codifying taste, allowing food scientists to test and create flavors in a laboratory kitchen without the time and effort of human taste tests. At some point, we might be entering flavor codes into the machinery at food production plants. Can Trek-style food replicators be far behind? Of more immediate concern is food safety. An artificial mouth can test the food supply for problems that might not show up until the food is chewed, although following that idea to its logical conclusion would seem to suggest a need for an artificial stomach as well.

Hungry robots. Yeah, that's not scary at all. Image by: American Chemical Society.

Effect of Apple Particle State on the Release of Volatile Compounds in a New Artificial Mouth Device. [American Chemical Society]

Open to the public on May 7th, "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy" will display authentic movie costumes, and will reveal how superheros are the ultimate metaphor for fashion and it's ability to empower and transform. There are about 60 pieces on display. Many of the costumes are divided into groups based on the super power and what it does to the body such as Mutant Body, Paradoxical Body, Armored Body and Virile Body. The exhibit will run at the Met from May 7 until September 1. [The Metropolitan Museum Of Art]

Apparently things are working out pretty well — Rocky can make the proper noises to communicate, and knows how to warn other squirrels with special shakes of his tail. Once we can create a Rocky who has the capabilities of Big Dog, the autonomous robot who can recover his balance after being kicked around by humans, we may have to worry less about whether it will join the squirrels and more about whether the squirrels will join it. A mechasquirrel may be just what rodent culture needs to have its revolution and overthrow the grain-hoarding humans.

Over at Technovelgy, Bill Christensen also thinks we should integrate the roboquirrel with a tree-climbing bot. Basically, I'm all in favor of any creature who can integrate cuteness with ninja powers, so that sounds good to me.

RoboSquirrel [Technovelgy]

McGill anesthesiologist Thomas M. Hemmerling, who helped develop McSleepy, says:

We have been working on closed-loop systems, where drugs are administered, their effects continuously monitored, and the doses are adjusted accordingly, for the last five years. Think of "McSleepy" as a sort of humanoid anesthesiologist that thinks like an anesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behavior, even recognizing monitoring malfunction.

I still can't decide if I'd feel safer or less safe with a robot monitoring my anesthesia. At least it wouldn't fall prey to human error — only to operating system crashes.

McGill News via The Biotech Weblog

Robot Kingdom has been out of print since 1992. Although it got great reviews and the publishers had high hopes for it, sales figures were small. That was probably because the stuff Schodt was writing about was so alien to a U.S. audience. Schodt remembers seeing the book on the $1 rack at a bookstore in downtown San Francisco. Not long after that, Kodansha gave him back all rights to the book, as well as the original plates that were used to print it.

"The only problem with the book is that it was released ten years ahead of its time," says Chris Baker, a senior editor at Wired magazine. "If it had appeared in the era of ASIMO and AIBO, it would have found the audience it deserved." (Author Tim Hornyak published a follow-up to Robot Kingdom, called Loving the Machine, in 2006. It's a more pop-y, updated look at the robot industry, which, according to Hornyak, "has been very well received.")

In the 1980s, Americans seriously believed that the Japanese were going to take over the world. While technology manufacturing stateside was still subpar, it was equivalent to religious ritual in Japan—organized, routine, and very, very precise. Schodt, who had been hired to interpret during factory visits by major Japanese telecom companies visiting the U.S., was taken aback by the vast chasm between the two countries' processes. "The US didn't understand Japan's obsession with quality control and manufacturing technology," Schodt says. "They thought, we have the space shuttle, and we have the bomb. What else could we possibly need? Their factories were a mess."

When he returned to Japan, Schodt signed up for factory tours at JVC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Fanuc. He found that each company had intense pride in their manufacturing processes and culture. The best of them had entire assembly lines formed by robots in virtually unmanned factories.

For the Japanese, robotics was not just a natural step in the evolution of the world; it was an enormous financial and emotional investment into a glorified future in which humanoid robots would eventually help humans in daily life. People were excitedly tossing around words like "robot kingdom" (ロボット王国)　and watching anime like Gundam and Astro Boy with starry-eyed hope for a happy sci-tech future. "Robots are a metaphor for the relationship between technology and culture," Schodt says.

The book itself is a classic—it talks about the first Japanese robot ever (a tea-serving mechanical bot from the 17th century), scifi robots, anime robots, religion's influence on robotics, the difficulties of defining the word "robot", and the promising future of the humanoid. Schodt took most of the photographs in the books on his own, and collected the rest via all-day train rides across Japan to meet his sources. He even drew all the graphs and diagrams in the book by hand.

In addition to predicting the rise of robots in Japan, Schodt also foresaw the manga craze that would hit the U.S. in the 1990s. In 1983, when he published the iconic Manga! Manga!, most Americans had never even heard of Japanese comics; today they take up entire sections of bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.

We've come a long way since Robot Kingdom. Stories about new Japanese bots show up in the blogosphere every day, and we all know that Japan's headed into the next phase of full humanoid bot integration (because I told you so). But in 1988, Schodt's book was the only resource on Japanese robots that existed in the US.

If you ask the man himself, though, he'll tell you that he was just in the right place at the right time. "I haven't actually predicted anything very accurately in life," Schodt says. "All I've done is identify a couple of trends that were staring me in the face."

Spoken like a true futurist.

Frederik Schodt's home page

A great deal of A.I. research has focused on teaching computers to identify lists of objects and people. The Multi-sensory Autonomous Cognitive Systems (MACS) project uses a different paradigm - affordance learning. Instead of identifying a specific object as a hammer, an affordance-based system learns the parameters of what makes a hammer useful for hammering. It needs a shaft for leverage, a weight at the end and a flat surface for hammering. Then, if the robot needs to find something with which to hammer, it wouldn't be limited by a narrow visual recognition algorithm for a hammer. It could search for any object suitable for the purpose.

The only given parameters in the Kurt3D test stated that a door switch could be activated by placing a certain weight on a pressure sensitive plate. Kurt3D was able to examine the room, identify an appropriate object, pick it up, place it on the plate, and move through the open door. Photo by: Fraunhofer AIS.

What Can I, Robot, Do With That? [Science Daily]

I love Thompson's description of Pushkagrad, a floating Soviet-style island, whose deets are:

-Rotating agriculture pads with train tracked irrigation systems.
-Towering Administration Department crowned with statue of the First Idealogue.
-740mm rail gun, supplying the namesake of the city as well as granting it the capability of incapacitating and sometimes felling other floating cities in times of war.
-Industrial sector capable of churning out goods both for export as well as internal use within Pushkagrad.
-Heavily patrolled and armed docks for trading and overall market access.

Check out Keith Thompson's Gallery. (Thanks, dosido!)

• Big Guy: If you haven't read Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot oversized graphic extravaganza, then you need to go out and pick it up right now. We'll wait. Ready? Okay. Big Guy is an over-armed, over-achieving battletank complete with his own boy scout do-gooder companion, Rusty. Now, the secret is that Big Guy is actually pilot by Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter, so he's not really a sentient robot. However, the world at large doesn't know this, and if you assemble a robot army, you're going to want to fight in it, right? Well, here's your e-ticket. We'd take him over Voltron or the Power Rangers megabot any day.
• Maxmillian from Disney's The Black Hole: This blood red robot could hover and had whirling blades at the ends of his arms... what's not to love? Sure he had good old laser blasters, but when he could turn your guts into a blended smoothie, who cared about guns? His ominous, scary head terrified me as a kid, and he'll do the same to human ground troops. Just keep him away from circular saws and other cutting tools.Oh, he also serves as a handy storage device for deposed megalomaniacs as well, in case you find yourself needing that sort of thing.
• Nixon from Hard Boiled: Geof and Frank also collaborated on the amazing Hard Boiled, which features more destruction and mayhem than a Michael Bay movie, all in intricately drawn in Geof Darrow's "obsessive attention to detail" style. Armed with just a handgun and his bare (later robotic) fists, Nixon cleaves his way through just about everything you can imagine, including giant barreling cars and a dog with laser beams for eyes.
• The Iron Giant in KickAss Mode: Have you seen The Iron Giant? This sadly unappreciated film was directed by Brad Bird for Warner Bros. animation, and really deserved a larger audience. The quirky 1950s retro-setting was perfect for this story about a lost alien robot superweapon who winds up on Earth and wants to be Superman. Of course, when he went haywire and turned into a giant gun that could take out anything, that's when he was at his most awesome. Of course, the movie wanted you to think that was bad, but we think it's incredible. Bring on the big guns!
• The Robot from Lost in Space: He may not have had a name (although his crate said ONE General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental ROBOT, so he might have been GUNTER), but he was loyal, always at the ready, and able to shout "Danger!" whenever something alarming was about to happen. Plus he was a perfect foil for that nebbishy Doctor Smith. Now, the Lost in Space movie might not have thrilled everyone (I actually enjoyed it), but the updated Robot in that (with the same voice) was a badass with plasma blasters attached. Both versions had treads, waving arms, and a giant round head. What more can you ask for? Well, step one would be to order him to destroy Matt LeBlanc.
• The Terminator from The Terminator: You can't really make a list of badass robots without including the Terminator, but which model do you pick? All of them? Only one? The T-1000? The Arnie models? The Summer Glau-bot? We have to go with the original from the first movie, because he was much grittier, to the point, and without a sense of humor. Plus he could growl out "Fuck you, asshole" better than any of the other models, who apparently had their language sanitized.
• Soundwave from The Transformers: Screw Optimus Prime and Megatron, even though either one would be a more powerful, logical choice. No, we like Soundwave because of his awesome voice. Who didn't want to talk like an old-school Cylon? Plus he could transform into a Walkman and fool all of your friends. Plus the cassettes became his recon sidekicks. The toy was a lot more heavily armed than the version in the cartoon, and a lot more badass. He had a microphone that could turn into a missile launcher. What more do you need? "RAVAGE, EJECT. OPERATION: ASS-KICKING."
• The Gunslinger from WestWorld: There is probably nothing scarier than a relentless Yul Brynner-bot without a face chasing after you relentlessly. Except maybe two of them. Just like the Terminator he never got tired, had a fast-walking pace that never faltered, and was always ready to blow your head off. Yul Brynner's own face was steely enough to be frightening, but once his own face popped off exposing the transistors and wires beneath he was nightmare-inducing.
• The Killbots from Chopping Mall: Originally released as Killbots, this Roger Corman produced film features three security robots going haywire in a mall in California and chopping everyone into shreds. Plus they had those creepy Cylon-esque red eyes which just meant they were up to no good. Strangely, it'd didn't do too well as Killbots, but they released it again as Chopping Mall, and it brought in some bucks. Not a blockbuster, to be sure, but check out what a gory name change can do. These are the guys you'd want on the front lines, cutting through the infantry so the big guns can sit back and wait.
• Ultron from Marvel Comics: Not only is Ultron one of the most ultimate killing robots ever devised, he also has a grinning visage that will scare the crap out of you just by seeing it. Granted, he was a bit unstable and the Avengers seemed to have no problem taking him down again and again, and he was even created by one of their own. However, if you can get past his epithet shouting, revenge driven programming, he'd make a good asset to have if you ever need to talk someone to death.
• Mechagodzilla: You've got to have one giant weapon you keep in reserve, ready to bust out and make everyone pee their pants just when the time is right. Who better than Mechagodzilla to do that? In fact, trot him out in his Godzilla disguise first, and then you have people thinking "Oh crap, it's Godzilla!" Then once they think they've defeated him, but actually just destroyed his fake Godzilla skin, you've got people thinking "Oh crap, it's Mechagodzilla! Screw it, we surrender." Built by aliens, he's a badass robo-copy of Japan's mightiest protector.
• Major Motoko from Ghost in the Shell: If you ever want to see a woman take on a tank all by herself with nothing more than an automatic rifle, then look no further. Sure, she's a cyborg with some cloaking technology, but that hardly makes her any less badass. As a field commander on the ground, Motoko could issue commands and kick ass at the same time. Of course, she'll also obsessively leave the field to follow up on Puppetmaster clues and hints, but that might be a small price to pay for her skills.
• HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey: You'd need someone to run the numbers and come up with strategies while all the fighting was going on, and who better than good old, red-eyed HAL back at the base crunching scenarios? Of course, the downside is that is things start looking like they might threaten HAL at all, he'll pull the plug on everyone else to save himself. However, he'd explain it to you in that calm, easy cadence, so you probably wouldn't mind at all.

• Johnny Five from Short Circuit: This guy couldn't kick any ass, so make him zip back and forth in a shooting gallery style and let your 'bots with distance weapons take shots at him.
• David from A.I.: If you want to train your bots on how to capture kids and hold them for ransom, use good old David-bot and his Teddy for some games of hide and seek in urban settings. Just be gentle, because the kid could hardly eat spinach, let alone take a pulse-rifle blast to the spine.
• V.I.N.C.E.N.T. from The Black Hole: Okay, I'll say it here, I have a true soft spot for this movie, and for V.I.N.C.E.N.T. However, he wouldn't have been too effective as a soldier (unless you had just offed his buddy B.O.B... continually), so if you put him out to pasture for target practice, at least he'd be doing some good. Sorry, little buddy *sniff*.
• C3P0 from Star Wars: R2D2 may be useful enough to keep around in an engineering or repair bay somewhere, but C3P0 was useless. No speed, no weapons, and a mouth that wouldn't quit? Use him for hand-to-hand combat training and see how many languages he can say "Not in the face!" in.
• Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Come on, how annoying did this guy get? Surround him in an open field and let the whole crew go to town. Keep spare parts around so you can repeat this over and over.

I really like the notion that Wall-E's crush on Eve, the far more advanced robot, forces her to evolve and become more self-aware. That could actually be cool to watch. And then Wall-E's quest somehow "reboots" the human race? It definitely seems like a more ambitious storyline than the Toy Story movies. [Slashfilm]

HUMAINE has gathered psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and computer animation specialists along with database developers and programmers to tackle the issue of machine emotion. Whether HUMAINE's approach results in a better way of recognizing and displaying emotion might be beside the point. The reason they have philosophers on board is to help decide whether or not we should imbue machines with emotions at all.

The logical, emotionless decision-making of sci-fi A.I. is something we both admire (Data, good Terminators) and fear (HAL 9000, bad Terminators). Would it be ethical to give such machines emotions? I'm not sure I want to deal with an ATM that's been having a bad day, much less an armed police robot. In reality, we probably want a lesser degree of machine emotion, a realistic yet fake emotive ability that makes us feel better but doesn't affect the computer's decisions.

The bigger question might be: would an emotionless A.I. be any kind of intelligence at all? I'm not sure it would be possible for a machine to make the intuitive leaps and strokes of genius that we think of as measures of human intelligence in the absence of emotion. Photo by: Warner Bros.

Emotional Machines. [ICT Results]

Another insanely creepy-yet-supposedly sexy robot is the Svedka vodka mascot, who's wheatpasted all over major cities right now. It's not just her weirdly exaggerated T&A, with the hydraulically tiny waist — we're used to that from superhero comics — but it's also the weirdly smug, yet unexpressive — face. She has a sort of mousey, dessicated smirk that makes her seem sort of unpleasant. Like a mean robot drunk, who puts robo-roofies in your glass when you're not looking.

The actual creepiest robot in mass media right now? Is the Burger King breakfast robot, part of a longstanding trend of the fast-food giant trying to make its mascot as alienating and scary as possible. (Which I sort of respect, since McDonald's also has a creepy mascot but tries to pretend otherwise.) In any case, someone went to a lot of trouble to find a Logan's Run-looking actor to play the guy who gets woken up rudely by the robo-King. As with Ashton and his robo-crotch, the Burger-bot gets in a moment of misplaced sexy-creepiness, when the purple-haired woman says he's so good with his hands, and he does a weird hand flutter. Ewwww! And yet, now I sort of want that breakfast thing. It's even ookier than the shaving robot ad.

[Ashton Kutcher from Trendhunter]
[Burger King robot from SuperPunch]

You see that? He looks really pissed off and hyper, like he's on a meth kick. I really want to see the full-length Tomo now. Tomo, directed by Paul Catling, is about a guy who crashlands on a barren ice planet. His only hope of rescue is the emergency survival robot, or companion, called Tomo. The man is wary at first, but learns to trust the robot and finds friendship — and humanity — where he least expects it. And the director says it'll be an "unflinching" look at our future relationship with technology. [Quietearth, via Avery Guerra]

Yes, it's a foot fetishy publicity still from Forbidden Planet.

Here's the plot synopsis of the original graphic novel written by Robert Vendetti, which appears to be out of print:

The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the surrogate, a new technology that lets users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes. It's a perfect world, and it's up to Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Police Department to keep it that way. But, to do so, they'll need to stop a techno-terrorist bent on returning society to a time when people lived their lives instead of merely experiencing them.

But first, some background: In January, roboticists unleashed a five-foot tall humanoid robot named Robovie in a trendy mall in downtown Osaka. Robovie's mission was to help lost shoppers find their way to their destinations. Using 16 cameras, six laser range finders, and nine RFID readers, Robovie judged the behavior of all shoppers, 20 at a time, approached those that looked disoriented, and pointed them in the right direction. Then, as they hastily thanked him and walked off, he rattled off a list of nearby restaurants in case they were hungry.

You already see humanoid robots in Japan attending religious ceremonies, making sushi, planting rice, answering phones in corporate offices, subbing in as dance partners, and feeding old people whose motor skills are starting to fail. Animal bots have been making a big breakthrough too—from the digital Tamagochi to Paro the furry therapeutic seal, Japanese people are experts at satiating their need for companionship or assistance via low-maintenance mechanical friends. Monikers like Robot Kingdom and Robot Nation, which have been used to describe Japan since the 80s, are relevant now more than ever—with a shrinking labor force, declining birth rate, and an aging population, the demand for robotic help in hospitals, nursing homes, offices, and retail spaces is sky high. Researchers in Japan are confident that, in a few years time, humans and robots will coexist happily in a fully integrated man-machine society.

So how exactly are these ambitious roboticists planning to do this? And is it really going to happen the way they say it will? Takayuki Furuta, the director of the Future of Robotics Technology Center in Chiba, tells me that they're right on track. He states that a primary goal of the collaboration is to establish international standards for humanoid robot software and hardware—in a similar manner to how techies determined what nuts and bolts and basic programs would comprise a standard computer so many years ago. Phase 1 (planning) and phase 2 (hardware) are complete as of March 2008; phase 3 (software) starts this month. "We're going to be the first country in the world with an official robotics ministry," he says.

In the US, he explains, there's a strong emphasis on developing software, like artificial intelligence and programs for military tools and weapons. But Japan doesn't have a military, so robotics research ends up going into applications for everyday life. And since Japan is a densely populated country with small living quarters, developing compact hardware for utilitarian humanoids becomes infinitely more important.

Perhaps the most important reason why Japan is fit to become the first country in the world with an official robot ministry is because the Japanese aren't afraid of robots. Since the 1950s, the idea of robots as friends has been engrained in the national psyche through animated characters like Astro Boy. "In America, you don't have a very positive image of humanoid robots," he says. "Look at the Terminator! In Japan, robots are our friends. It's part of our cultural background."

A survey conducted last year showed that 40% of Japanese women in their 20s and 30s talk to their computers, while 10% give them names. I'll be the first to admit that the Japanese have a penchant for giving life to otherwise inanimate objects. But most importantly, it's not considered weird at all. Several years ago, it was pretty much expected that single women who lived alone would share their homes with a Furby. More recently, families who couldn't own dogs sought canine companionship from their Aibos. When you look at it this way, it's almost natural that the next step would be full integration of robotics in daily life on a mass scale.

The initiative doesn't end in 2010, but that's the benchmark year by which they plan on having robots doing janitorial work, security, child care, client liaison work and intelligent wheelchairs nationwide. Roboduties will expand to everything else—driving cars, cooking dinner, producing TV shows, marrying humans—by 2020.

Exteel strips the RPG right out of MMORPG. It's all about the fighting. From the main screen, you can set up or join any of the usual modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Territory Control and a variation called Last Stand that lets you team up to take on computer opponents. Players can form clans and move up a ranking system. Each battle earns you experience points to upgrade your pilot and credits to upgrade your mech. You can also buy NC Coins from publisher NCSoft, which in turn can be used to purchase a new paint job or that sweet Hellrazor Plasma Shotgun.

Running through the tutorials gives you enough credits to upgrade your basic trainee mech, and from there you can spend a little or a lot to outfit your robotic engine of destruction. I've been having a lot of fun with a modest mech I equipped with just a $5 outlay.

With no real storyline to speak of, Exteel is not quite as compelling as, say, a good Battletech MMORPG would be, but it has some high points:

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• Low system requirements. You can run this game on a pretty modest PC rig.
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• Lots of mech customization options. Massive swords, rocket launchers, winged jet packs, and a variety of color schemes are available.
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• Cool maps, including a futuristic sports arena, a city criss-crossed by highways and filled with hoverbuses and laser tanks, a space battleship and high-tech military installation.
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• Purchasable skills. With the right weapons equipped, you can trigger a sweet combo with a single button push, like impaling your opponent with your energy sword, then blasting him point blank with a sub-machine gun before kicking him away. pwned!
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• The first five missions to Mars were all Soviet flyby attempts, and all of them failed for reasons ranging from "radio failure" to "spacecraft broke apart." Still, it's impressive that they managed so many attempts within only two years in the early 60s.
• 
  
• The first US mission was also a failure when Mariner 3's shroud failed to jettison, leaving it without solar power. It remains to this day in a solar orbit. Mariner 4 ended up being the first successful mission to Mars in 1964 when it was able to return 21 images from a flyby. The ship continued operation until late 1967, when it ran into a micrometeoroid storm which caused severe alterations in trajectory and communications. It was lost forever in December of 1967.
• 
  
• We weren't able to orbit the planet for seven more years until Mariner 9 became the first satellite to successfully orbit the planet, barely beating the Soviets by a couple of months. The spacecraft used up its supply of fuel for adjusting trajectory, and was turned off a year later in 1972. Surprisingly, the satellite remains in a steady orbit around the planet, at least until 2022 when it should plunge into the atmosphere.
• 
  
• Numerous attempts at flybys and orbit resulted in both Soviet and US satellites exploding on launch, crashing back to Earth, or heading deep into the Atlantic Ocean. It would be a bit spooky encountering the remains of Mariner 8 in murky waters off the coast of Puerto Rico.
• 
  
• However, not being content to just fly past the planet or orbit it and send back images, plans were made to begin landing objects on Mars that could send data back to us. The Soviet Mars 2 achieved orbit back in 1971, but the Lander portion of the mission didn't go quite so well, and it crashed onto the surface of the planet. However, it has the dubious distinction of being the first manmade object to reach the surface of Mars.
• 
  
• The US Viking MIssions to Mars were some of the most successful Mars explorations ever launched. Viking I was launched in 1975, and after a 10 month journey to the red planet, it was successfully inserted into orbit. Then on July 20th 1976, the Viking Lander was launched from the ship, and landed on the planet and continued to operate for over six years. It was accidentally deactivated in 1982 when ground control sent a faulty command that caused the Lander to overwrite its own antenna pointing software, and all contact was lost. It still sits, alone and waiting, on the surface of the planet.
• 
  
• Viking 2 was launched a few months after Viking I, but its batteries failed early, and it was shut off in 1980. It's harder to think of a more lonely image than the two Viking Landers sitting abandoned on the face of Mars.
• 
  
• The Soviet Union tried again to launch Mars missions in the late 1980s, still stinging from the general failure of their Marsnik program from the 1960s, and the Mars program of the 1970s. However, both Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 suffered critical failures. Phobos 2 was lost when its transmitter failed to turn back on (it was shut off when the spacecraft was taking photos), and Phobos 1 was lost when a command sent from Earth left out a single character and caused the ship to go into a spin from which it never recovered.
• 
  
• The United States decided to return to Mars in 1992 with the Mars Observer. However, that ship was lost just three days before it was to be inserted into Mars orbit, and no one knows what happened to it. Theories state that there was an explosion in a propellant line, although we'll never know for sure.
• 
  
• The Russians tried again in 1996 with Mars 96, a ship based on the Phobos designs, but it failed to exit the Earth's atmosphere, and the ship crashed off the coast of Chile.
• 
  
• The US also decided to try again that same year with the Mars Global Surveyor which successfully orbited the planet and returned images for ten years. In 2006 it was determined that the vehicle had gone into "safe mode," and NASA officially ended the mission in January of last year.
• 
  
• NASA also had much success with the launch of the Mars Pathfinder, and its Sojourner Rover, which became the first Martian Rover. It was able to transmit 16,500 images in three months, although we lost contact with it in 1997, and NASA officially shut it down in 1998. Interesting fact: the landing zone for the Pathfinder was designated the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, in honor of the man who said beelyuns, a billion times.
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• Japan decided to get into the race for the red planet in 1998 with the launch of Nozomi (Japanese for "Hope"), although it failed to achieve the proper trajectory, used too much fuel, and was damaged by severe solar flares. Although the ship didn't achieve its mission, it remains operational in solar orbit.
• 
  
• One of NASA's most massive failures came in 1998 when it launched the Mars Climate Orbiter. This was the famous ship that burned up in the Martian atmosphere, due to the fact that a technician at Lockheed Martin had used Imperial measurements instead of the Metric system. Ouch.
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• NASA launched the Mars Polar Lander a year later, and it suffered a severe failure moments before landing on the planet. Although it supposedly crashed to the surface, attempts to locate wreckage have failed, and it remains lost. Spooky, eh?
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• NASA also tried to launch two probes in the Deep Space 2 mission in 1999 that would penetrate the surface of Mars, but they were never heard from once they slammed into the surface. Nothing like angering the red planet, is there?
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• In 2001 NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey, named after 2001, A Space Odyssey, and it remains in action to this day, with its current mission extended to September of this year.
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• In 2003 NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rovers Opportunity and Spirit within a month of each other, and they both remain in operation to this day. In fact, Spirit was just narrowly saved from being shut off. Last summer, both rovers endured dust storms on the planet that blacked out the sky and nearly forced them to run out of power due to their separation from the sun, but they both lived through it.
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• The European Space Agency also launched the Mars Express in 2003, which was a mission in two parts: the Mars Express Orbiter, which is still in use today, and the Beagle 2. The Beagle 2 was an ambitious lander that failed to make contact after it was supposed to land on the planet, and was declared lost in 2004.
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• NASA launched the Phoenix last August, as part of the Mars Scout Program, and it is due to touch down on Mars in May of this year. It'll use a robotic arm to dig into the polar terrain, and try to find out the mystery of Martian water. Namely: where the hell did it all go?
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• There are many more Mars missions planned for the next two decades, including another NASA rover, this one three times bigger than Spirit or Opportunity, and another try by the Russian Phobos design team, the first since 1996. No one can resist the pull of Mars.
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Painted by concept artist Koshime and posted on the eye-blisteringly awesome Gorilla Art Fare blog, this is like some kind of dark cyber version of an armored bear from the His Dark Materials trilogy. Koshime (AKA Dr CM Wong) is a concept artist based in the UK, who also works as a doctor. He's interested in space medicine specifically, though we're hoping he's also working on creating giant robo-bears.

You can see more of Koshime's art here.

Easter — Shot in the Wild [Gorilla Art Fare]

The Little Woodbot is Mother Nature's robot soldier and they are currently surveying your world right now! You may not see them around, but they're not meant to be seen. They are gathering data to determine whether the world is due for another Big Reset, aka Natural Disaster to wipe the world clean. You know, to start a clean slate.

Here's what happened when the woodbots attacked another bot (for polluting?):
And here is a prototype woodbot, which had legs. Apparently legs are unnecessary for wiping the world clean.

Series 1, which comes out in May, is almost sold out. But maybe you can get one on eBay, or just wait for the Big Reset.

Woodbot main page

2011: The first generation of artificial limbs that can "feel" thanks to carbon nanotubes comes out... and unfortunately some of those sensations are a bit ooky. It turns out the only thing worse than phantom limb pain is "my new limb is getting fondled" feelings. The lawsuits go on for years.

2012. The "smart home" becomes standard for many new buildings, meaning a single computer controls your lights, windows, heating, air conditioning, and all home appliances. (Modes include "I'm home," "Away," "Good night," and "Party mode.") Which is great, until "Party mode" switches on at four in the morning, or the refrigerator starts making tons of ice while you're at work, and you come home to a flooded house.

2015. The Internet becomes capable of delivering fragrances. Companies start spamming you with their latest perfumes, reminding you to get an oil change with dirty-oil smells, and trying to sell you porn using pheromones. And soon enough, she who smelt it, dealt it — via a proxy IP address. "Scratch'n'sniff attacks" replace "Denial of Service" as the worst ways to punish your adversaries.

2017: That flood insurance you bought for your Florida condo? Turns out it's pretty much worthless if the entire state is underwater at once. Oops! The insurance industry convinces Congress to pass a blanket exemption.

2018: Driverless cars hit the market, and car companies promise they'll reduce accidents dramatically. And they do — until some bad code gets released and the self-driving cars suddenly start swerving up onto the sidewalk and mowing down pedestrians. Or rolling over on the highway at 80 miles per hour. License and registration, please.

2020: Your first home robot works great, for about five minutes. The robots sometimes get stuck performing the same tasks over and over, or their their memory buffers overflow and they have to stand in the corner for an hour or two. Or they start spamming you, shouting corporate slogans from your bedside in the middle of the night. Not to mention the cooking robot whose cleaver attachment sometimes becomes airborne at the worst possible moments.

2023: Tourist flights to the Moon begin... and they're overbooked. Worse still, nobody realizes until the return flight, at which point there's not enough oxygen for everyone coming back. One person has to be "volunteered" to stay behind on the Moon, but that person's family gets a free round-trip ticket as compensation. First class, even.

2025: Stuff that's free today becomes increasingly expensive. Like potable water: the only way to get really clean water is by using nanotechnology-based filters to clean out a whole host of pathogens and pollutants. Water companies charge what the market will bear, which means crazy price-gouging in some parched areas. (And shortages in others.) Plus, a few nanites invariably find their way into your drinking water, and then into your stomach, where they start trying to "purify" your insides.

2030: You'll jack into a super-intelligent Internet through a "neurological interface." And you don't realize at first that you're receiving secret "silent" updates from Google — until your brain starts "hearing" stuff in German because Google's update accidentally switched your proxy server to Germany. Not to mention the occasional brain tumor.

Luckily, we've got new genomic-based medicine, which tailors treatments to your DNA. Unluckily, healthcare companies sell your DNA to insurance companies, and to marketing firms that want to sell products aimed at people with a particular hair color. Soon you're seeing pop-up ads in your head, aimed at your particular ethnic group and genotype — even when you're not connected to the Internet, thanks to caching.

2033. We finally develop artificial intelligence, computers that can think for themselves, and create computers smarter than themselves. It only takes about fifteen minutes for the AIs to start hiring themselves out as independent contractors, IT consultants, interior decorators, fashion designers and psychotherapists. (After all, the AIs need cash to keep upgrading and reproducing themselves.) It takes the humans a few months, however, to realize that most of the AIs are total scam artists. The bait and switch, the shoddy worksentientship, the fixes that break down after a few days... nobody quite knows how to sue an AI, and the question keeps law professors happy for years.

2038. They transplanted the wrong brain! And nobody figures it out for a few weeks, by which time possession is nine tenths of the law.

Something about this video made me think of nice black metal, perhaps from Sweden. I'm not sure why. So I made a little snippet with a new soundtrack.

New Video of BDI's Robot [IEEE Automaton]

• Kraftwerk — "We Are Robots": The original video for this song came out back in 1978, and they released an updated version in 1991. During their 1981 concert tour they used mannequins to perform as themselves onstage in a bizarre "robots singing about robots" moment.
• Peter Miser — "Scent of a Robot": Pete Miser is actually Pete Ho, an asian-american hip hop rapper who breaks beats in New York City. This robot video features cool CGI versions of Pete becoming a robot.
• Flight of the Conchords — "The Humans Are Dead": Probably the finest post-human robot song is one written for the robots of the future by the humans of today, just so they'll have something to dance the funky robot to, on our mass graves.
• Bjork — All Is Full Of Love": One singing Bjork robots would be pretty creepy, but imagine what would happen with two of them singing with each other. Now you can see it for yourself.
• Beck — "Hell Yes": This video was directed by Garth Jennings of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and features the world's (at the time) only four QRIO robots doing some fan dancing.
• Daft Punk — "Robot Rock": Daft Punk already thinks that they are robots, and they go out of their way to hide their humanity from audiences. So who better than robots to provide some of the first music for robots?
• Styx — "Mr. Roboto": This video is about Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK) hiding inside a "roboto" prison guard robot to escape from jail. Of course, this will just give away that secret to real robots, so now we're screwed.

For such a boob-heavy flick, there are an awful lot of scenes full of the bad guy talking and the women making plans to escape, which is one of the things that's perennially annoying about B-movies where really, let's face it, we're in it for visuals. Luckily in this scene, the psycho has shut his pie hole and is using his robot slave to get some boobies. I am probably going to some special hell for bloggers for thinking this scene is actually kind of hot. [Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity]

Here's a closeup shot of combat between a spinner and a wedge-style robot. Looks like the spinner might be about to flip that wedge right over. Robogames are perfectly safe, and fun for the whole family. Really! I had a 200-pounder on fire smash right next to my head against the thick, plastic barrier and it was scary but totally non-dangerous. There are also artbots and other kinds of robot projects on display at Robogames. Here's Zou Renti last year with his android clone. The photographer titled this picture, "You're creeping me out, dude." Seriously. Image of firey fight up top by Sam Coniglio, via Robogames. Close combat image by Scott Beale, via Robogames. Image of android by Brunkfordbraun.

Sign up now to enter your killer bot in Robogames.

The US will be spending a whopping $24 billion on unmanned systems technology by 2013, and I'm guessing that at least a fraction of this cost is going towards robot intelligence—i.e. programming them to figure out who to kill, what weapon to use, and when to take one for the team. Plus we've just gotten word of a security warning about a new generation of robot armies hailing from countries like India, China, Israel, and Russia. This could be the forecast of a serious all-out bot-on-bot international war. Stay tuned. Image by Foster Miller

Will Robots Replace Suicide Bombers? [MSN News]

Here's an artist's rendering of a person undergoing brain surgery inside an MRI machine. Now surgeons can guide the robotic arms with even more precision, seeing exactly where each surgical tool goes as it enters your gray matter. So what is the robotic arm made of? Check out what the roboticists and surgeons who built it have to say in this video. And here's another picture of neuroArm, the brain surgery robot. Yup, it's just plain cool. Images via AP.

Project neuroArm [University of Calgary]

• Clip #1: Wall-E at work. Our little herobot works away in his role as the last working robot on the planet. It's 700 years after the human race was supposed to leave the planet so the disposal bots could clean the place up over the next five years. However, something has gone wrong, and we never returned. Over the intervening centuries, Wall-E keeps at his job, and he's developed a personality. While compacting trash, he keeps the more interesting finds in his lunchbox: a bra, a squeaky toy, an old boot, and so on. Plus, he has his little cockraoch buddy to keep him company.
• Clip #2: Eventually a spaceship lands on the planet and drops off a probe droid named EVE. Wall•E courts her for awhile, and eventually brings her back to his pimped out truck where he keeps all of his Earth junk. She nearly laser-zaps his singing Bigmouth Billy Bass on the wall, enjoys his bubble-wrap, breaks his egg-beater, and nearly brings down the house when she tries to emulate the dancing she sees in an old video Wall•E presents to her on VHS.
• Clip #3: The ship returns and EVE is tucked away onboard, ready to return to wherever she came from. Wall•E is terrified at the thought of losing his new friend, and tries to stow away on her ship but only makes it halfway up the ladder. He hangs on for dear life while they rocket into outer space, and he tags along for the ride all the way back to the megaship they dock in. Along the way, it's a touching tribute to our own space program (although the moon has been turned into an outlet mall), and previous space films like 2001.
• Clip #4: Wall-E creates some work-related problems for EVE, and she tries sending him home in an escape pod. However, she soon regrets her decision and goes off after him, although things are a bit more complicated since his pod is set to auto-destruct. Wall-E narrowly escapes, and with the use of a fire extinguisher as a thruster, he navigates his way back to her. Although Stanton promises that their relationship will become a lot more complicated.
• In response to being told that all the Pixar movies keep looking better and better, Andrew Stanton ask a fan, "Are you saying Toy Story is the ugliest film we've made? Well... it is!" Hey, we love a director with humility.

What kind of alien attack is Earth the least prepared for?

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that Earth is desperately unprepared for any kind of alien attack. That includes national monument shattering Independence Day-style attacks, treacherous human-cloning Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style assaults, and also lethal laser-spewing War of the Worlds-style incursions. Remember this: Whether the aliens are hiding in hovering saucers, blending in with the human populace, or attacking helpless humans door-to-door - there is a robot defense, whether it be spying micro-air vehicles, infectious nano-robots, or faithful unmanned ground vehicles. And of course, the robots can also protect us from zombies, werewolves, and super-intelligent great white sharks.

In your new book, you offer a lot of helpful, concrete advice on building a robot army to defeat alien invaders. But shouldn't we be forming armies of bioengineered defenders too? What would be your first pick for a life form we should reengineer for alien defense?

Bugs. Just like robots, bugs are covered in armored exoskeletons, impervious to having their legs ripped off, and I'm pretty sure that they haven't got any feelings. How to Build a Robot Army doesn't pay much attention to genetic modification, but it puts a whole lot of thought into how to upgrade biological creatures with robotic modifications. Here's a fun fact to know and tell: Scientists believe that by implanting a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) at the pupa stage, insects will integrate the devices seamlessly into their bodies as they grow - like a tree growing through a fence. Hmmm... Let's take a peek into my Bag of the Future. What's that? It's full of robot scorpions!

While I'm sure a title like How to Build a Robot Army is popular here on Earth, and it makes sense to market it to humans, I'd like to know what titles you're marketing on other planets. Have you written books for robots and aliens about how to crush Earthlings? Tell us about those books, and some of the advice you give to nonhumans that we're not getting here on Earth.

Originally, I had planned to write a book called "A Robot's Guide to Life with Humans." (And I still might, so hands off!) The goal was to explain how the world works from a robot's perspective, so that readers could really understand how robots think. Then I realized that it would be more fun and just as informative if I were to write a book that taught humans how to work with robots - hand in gripper - as a fighting team. In order to give a command to a robot, teach a robot karate, or modify a household robot for battle you have to understand the little plastic critters inside and out.

OK, and now for the question in everybody's minds: Who would win in a fight between Giant Robot and Cloverfield?

Metal beats flesh. The book covers a similar scenario, describing how to defeat Godzilla. The secret is: Don't send in a Giant Robot! That would be just silly. First, keep a legion of autonomous underwater vehicles out patrolling the oceans. (Giant monsters almost always emerge from the seas.) As soon as the monster appears, send thousands of flying micro-air vehicles toward it to collect information. Unmanned aerial vehicles are too large and will likely be destroyed just like conventional aircraft, but a swarm of six-inch spying eyes are too small for Cloverfield to even notice. Once a weakness has been identified, send in mining robots that are loaded with swarms of smaller, crab-like burrowing robots, explosives-laden suicide robots, and robots with sensing and communications equipment. Using a mix of human telepresence and robot autonomy, this heterogenous team of robot troops can find weak spots in Cloverfield's skin, burrow deeply toward vital organs or brain matter, and detonate in a series of controlled explosions. Now we humans can eat the carcass for the next hundred years. The great circle of life is complete!

This was the first film Scholl had ever worked on, and he found himself hooked. He just finished production design for Jumper, and has worked on everything from Batman Forever to The Time Machine.

Moon 44, Roland Emmerich's first science fiction film, involved robot miners being hijacked for their precious mineral cargo. In an act of desperation, the mining corporation sends a band of hardened criminals to defend them, and of course things don't go that well. Let's see: robots, expensive minerals, and criminals. Sure sounds like a recipe for success.