You probably remember Stickybot III either from reading about it here or from being startled to see it crawling up your window somewhere. Either way, you were right to shriek. One day this glass climbing bot will scale office buildings, making sure that you drones are working. By then, it will also be able to enter the building via special ducts if it spots a human office slacker, shooting you dead with a laser and alerting another bot to clean up the body as a replacement worker is ushered in. But I digress.

The latest version of bot has a two-layered structure to the foot, one that’s similar to the gecko’s lamellae and setae. It’s made from an adhesive rubber-type material that contains tiny polymer hairs that allow the robot to climb wood paneling, painted metal and glass. So what next?

Rotating ankles. The researchers want to scale up the technology at some point to human-sized pads that would allow a person to literally climb the walls.

[Discovery]

Behold Terminator 2: The Opera! You will laugh, you will cry. You will sing like Arnold and lament “I’d give anything to kill someone again.”

Robocop:The Musical is below. You will never look at Alex Murphy the same way again.

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Produced by OWI ROBOTS, The Robotic Arm Edge Kit has many cool features. Remotely controlled, the arm can bend at 3 different joints, clamp its jaw on items, and swivel back and forth. The wrist joint has a vertical ROM of 120 degrees, further down the elbow joint has a vertical ROM of 300 degrees and a base horizontal rotation of 270 degrees. Having this much freedom, The OWI ROBOTS arm can nearly pick up anything that’s 12.6 inches away.

Only being able to pick up 100 grams (3.5 oz.) of weight, I don’t know how much of a use this robot can be, but I’m sure someone can find a good use for it. This kit also consists of a small search light located in the center of the gripper and a safety gear audible indicator to prevent any potential injury or gear breakage during operation.

[Jameco]

Ever wanted to through a party for your geeky child, but didn’t want to make him a mockery to all of his friends? Well fear no more with these adorable robot-print cupcake liners and robot cupcake topper decorations.

Sold separately, the Robot Party Centerpiece , designed as a robot rocket ship, will lighten up the air around your table.

[Robotsnob]

Ever created a model of your favorite action figure out of the those plastic model kits and had tons of empty plastic sheets left over at your disposable? Well maybe you should make a generous donation to these artists.

This Gundam figure took 250 man hours to complete this figure, but only over 95 days. Just creating something that size out of those fragile plastic pieces would be amazing, but in that short time, they created a masterpiece. Standing 3 meters tall, the RG RX-78-2 Gundam will be on display at Chara Hobby.

[Gizmodo]

Waldo, the 6-foot autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) spent 28 days at sea and found no significant traces of underwater oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill after being launched July 19th. It did however encounter a shark, when that shark bit into and damaged Waldo’s rudder. During shark week of course.

Had the bot been lost or swallowed whole, it would have been an interesting game of Where’s Waldo.

[keysnet]

Here’s yet another reason to pick up Fallout: New Vegas. According to North American ratings body the ESRB, Fallout: New Vegas features some human/robot relations. ESRB says:

“there is also an extended sequence suggesting (no depiction) sexual activity with a robot”

Here’s some priceless sample dialogue:

“Fisto reporting for duty . . . Please assume the position,” “I suppose I should test you out . . . Servos active!” and “Something wrong with someone if they got to f**k a machine.”

[inquisitr]

For our latest excursion into the uncanny valley, Geminoid F is back and starring in a new PR video from Kokoro, who collaborates with Osaka University’s Hiroshi Ishiguro to create android women of our nightmares.

Geminoid F got its name because it’s an almost exact replica of a human female model. Actroid F can move its eyes, mouth, head, and back, and hopes to be a real girl someday, so that she can shag and nag, not just be used as a telepresence robot.

Actroid F has minimal servomotors to save on cost, so it can’t even walk. But Kokoro has plans to sell 50 units to museums and hospitals for $110,000 each, where they will act as receptionists, patient attendants, guides, and perve magnets.

[CNet]

Holographic projector faulty? Just do it the old fashioned way.

[gamefreaks]

Swiss researchers have used a fruit fly to steer a mobile robot through an obstacle course in the lab. They call it the simply the Cyborg Fly. Chauncey Graetzel and colleagues at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems built a miniature IMAX movie theater for their fly. Inside, they glued the fly facing an LED screen that flashed different patterns. These patterns stimulated the fly to beat its left or right wing faster or slower, and a vision system translated the wing motion into commands to steer the robot in real time.

That’s right. Fruit flies used to be an annoyance, but soon they will become skynet. The future is looking weirder by the hour. The fly believed itself to be airborne when it was actually fixed to a tether watching LEDs blink, while remote controlling a robot from a virtual-reality simulation arena. Check out a video below.

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