Drawing is most defiantly a tough skill to possess, but after many years of practice and school, you learn to do it; and do it well for that matter. Well haven’t you always wanted a portrait of yourself to hang up on the wall, but you don’t want to pay someone else to do it for you? Well here you go! Now you can be like a rich snob without even being rich.

The self-portrait robot designed by Jen Hui Liao snaps a picture of you, then stores it in its blank memory and draws on it like a blank canvas. Except, instead of drawing it for you, it encases your hand and makes you put every drop of ink on the paper. It does sound like it’s just going to make you draw it yourself, but as shown in the video below, it only holds your fingers and hand in place, so it does every stroke for you, but don’t worry, that self satisfaction is guaranteed after you finished the impossible.

(more…)

The Norton Commando robot by Steve Twist is a neat new take on the transforming process. In this short a neat looking “healthy” robot transforms into a rideable motorbike. It took Twist about eight months to do this, all for his Undergraduate Degree course in Computer Visualization and Animation at Bournemouth University.

[Gizmowatch]

Military researchers have built a tiny drone that looks and flies just like a hummingbird. Even your garden isn’t safe now. Next time you see that pretty hummingbird sucking nectar from your flowers, you may just think twice about how cute it is.

This thing flaps its robotic wings to stay in air like the real thing. So far, the bird has only stayed aloft for 20 seconds at a time, but it has shown its capability as a spy already. AeroVironment doesn’t just want the little drone to fly like a bird but also to look like one. So it has been given another $2.1 million(By DARPA) to build a humming bot version 2.0.

[New Launches]

The SCRATCHbot was designed for search and rescue missions. What’s interesting about this one is that, much like a real rat, it uses its whiskers to detect disaster survivors in dangerous areas. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory developed the rat-bot over the past 6 years and now they hope to find interest for it in underground and underwater projects where vision can’t locate people/things.

It may have some other uses as well, like textile inspection and implementation inside intelligent vacuum cleaners, where it would be able to adjust the cleaning to the particular surface it senses. Video below.
(more…)

The trailer for Robogeisha is three minutes of absolute robot/geisha craziness. This is NSFW due to violence alone. I mean, in one scene a girl gets stabbed in the ass and blood shoots out. This may be the best or worst thing ever. TENGU MILK! HANDICAP GUN! GEISHA CHAINSAW!

[Topless Robot]

Clara is a creepy little robot baby with a duct tape diaper on her midsection instead of her ass, and a hankering to play the theremin. Clara was created by Sarah Angliss, a musician and sound artist. And Clara will be in my nightmares henceforth, terrifying me with her creepiness and occasionally shitting herself, while providing her own otherworldly theremin soundtrack.

This music video looks like it was shot in the 60’s and I believe it may be some kind of cult propaganda. The damn baby keeps making weird sounds and waving a kitchen whisk everywhere.

[Robot Living]

In the first Cylon war, some forty years prior to humanity’s eventual colonization on Earth1, the original robotic centurions rebelled against their human creators. Much like they will do to us, oh, any time now.

The war was bloody and brutal as depicted in this beautiful lithograph of an original oil painting, commissioned by Universal Studios and hung on the wall in Admiral Adama’s office. It was painted by BSG assistant art director Ken Rabehl and mixes medieval elements with the robotic onslaught.

[Thinkgeek] VIA [The Awesomer]

We heard just earlier this month that Pleo, the lovable dinosaur robot was going to be made available again thanks to Jetta buying out the rights for the bot from original maker Ugobe. But availability for the dino was questionable.

Now, it seems Pleo will be available in the U.S. thanks to Senario. There are still plenty of these bots in stock and ready to be purchased from a number of outlets. So, there you have it, folks. Pleo lives on for another day!

[robots.net]

LMR-user Arek ArunioSmo has created a very unique robot design, the Climber. To allow the robot to go up stairs, it needs a wooden arc design so the energy is perfectly spread out, making it be possible for it to propel itself yet hold it’s position while doing so.

The first prototype was a failure on the first and last steps, but Arek had fixed that by adding an additional rubber wheel to the front, so it would be able to climb the first step and last step without falling. The Climber is a really unique design, which will lead to many other stair-climbing robots.

[Eggshell-Robotics]

When I first saw this pic, there was something about it that I just couldn’t put my finger on. Then it hit me. Maybe it’s just me, but do these two bots not resemble Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman?

Jamie is the one on the bottom. That’s clearly a beret instead of hair and he has the mustache and glasses. Then you have Adam on top. Granted, Adam doesn’t have a stache like Jamie’s but he’s always got some growth. It makes sense that his stache would grow with no arms to shave. The hair is dead on and of course the glasses again.

Apparently they both lost their arms to one of Grant’s robots and judging by their chests they heart each other bunches.

[Randompictures]