Great Robot shirt. It takes the age old Japanese proverb and gives it a robotic twist: “Input no evil, Process no evil, Output no evil.” Only $24.

[Etsy]

The U.S. Department of Defense wants to develop virtual parents to comfort children when moms and dads on active duty aren’t available to talk.

In a solicitation for proposals posted on the department’s Small Business Innovation Research Web site, the military says it’s seeking to “develop a highly interactive PC- or Web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with ‘virtual’ renditions of deployed Service Members.”

“The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics,” the solicitation says. “For instance, a child may get a response from saying, ‘I love you,’ or ‘I miss you,’ or ‘Good night mommy/daddy.’ This is a technologically challenging application because it relies on the ability to have convincing voice-recognition, artificial intelligence, and the ability to easily and inexpensively develop a customized application tailored to a specific parent.”

Yeah, let’s replace parent with chatbots. Replicants will soon follow. Then one day, kids won’t even know their own parents, having been raised by robots entirely.

[informationweek]

Created by Nick Greenlee, this short Visual Effects piece shows us the real war that’s waged with Mac vs PC. Robots beating the crap out of each other. Great little video.

V&A Steamworks’ Steampunk Lego Robots are detailed and they actually work and feature motorized claws and gun mounts. They are the work of Guy Himber, who also has an awesome Batmobile-like Steam Carriage in the gallery.

[Flickr]

It used to be that the only pin-up calendars you saw were in an auto-shop, featuring scantilly clad women on cars. But as geeks inherit the Earth, the Warbot 2009 edition calendar shall reign supreme. Gun-wielding robots in Santa hats, sexy shots of robots and mustached dudes, George W. Bush. This is a genius calendar.

[BBGadgets]

No story about love and/or sex with robots would be sufficient, in my opinion, without some mention of Zoltan. Zoltan is the pseudonym of a man from Georgia who was interviewed by Gizmodo in March 2008. He tells the story of his relationship with robotic wife Alice, and what it’s like being a technosexual. I suppose I’m starting this post by paying a small homage to the Zoltan interview, which was captivating, creepy, and even a little sad. If you’re not familiar with Zoltan, I highly suggest you read it.
Today, however, the spotlight shines on 33 year old Le Trung and his robotic companion Aiko. Le Trung, from Ontario, Canada, says he never had time to have a real partner, and began building the fem-bot Aiko two years ago. Aiko, who is supposed to be in her twenties, is made of latext, sensors, and voice recognition software. Her sensors are spread throughout her face and body. She can speak and understand 13,000 sentences in Japanese and English, and can even perform simple cleaning tasks.
Unlike Zoltan, Le does not have sex with his robotic partner. She wasn’t programmed to be taken to the bone-zone, but Le says a few simple tweaks could make her into a sexbot: “Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm and reacting to touch as if she is playing hard to get or being straight to the point.”
So far, building Aiko has cost Le $21,000, he’s even had to sell his car to afford Aiko. A small price to pay, I guess, for what he sees as “the perfect woman”. Aiko is rather sexy, for a robot. Other robot girls I’ve seen have all been hopelessly entrenched at the bottom of the uncanny valley. Le says, “I want to make her look, feel and act as human as possible so she can be the perfect companion.”
This is somewhat touching, but also kind of horrifying. We must heed the Space Pope’s warning about such doings. Really, though, will bumpin’ uglies with a machine ever not be viewed as deviant sexual behavior? Is it taboo now, or is technosexuality such an obscurity that there isn’t yet a social stigma even attached to it? As technology becomes ever more advanced, it isn’t impossible to imagine a world where some humans might opt for robotic partners. We increasingly see robots filling roles once occupied solely by humans, and being a companion to another person can, in some cases, be a dull, dirty, dangerous job. So why not have robot spouses?
See some photos of Le and the amazing fem-bot Aiko at the source article, and check out Aiko videos on YouTube.

[The Sun] VIA [Gizmodo]

ABB robots are just plain crazy and make lame videos. As evidenced by these. In the first video, the folks at ABB are showing off how flexible and powerful the new line of IRB 4600 industrial robots are. How do they do this? By pitting it against a professional Brazilian fighter named Edison. The results are insanely lame and weird.

The next video is a dance piece choreographed for an ABB robot to do a duet with a human dancer. It premiered in Finland last May, but like the first video, it’s a whole lotta nothin layered with some bizarre.

Pole Dancing Stripper Robots! Pole Dancing Stripper Robots! Tits and ass have been replaced by Chips and ass. I’m not sure if this is one of the signs of the apocalypse or not, but the video leaves my man-parts confused and unsatisfied.

The robots are part of the MuTate London exhibition. That’s about all we know.

[BBC]

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academics, medication errors are the most common medical errors harming at least 1.5 million people annually. This costs about $3.5 billion a year. The new Intellifill IV from ForHealth Technologies aims to cure this problem by being “In ur pharmacies, sortin ur meds”.

Alison Apple, the pharmacy administrator at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee says, “The IntelliFill i.v. robotic technology is simply amazing and ensures medication safety through the use of barcodes.”

Oh yeah? Click through for a video on what robots really do with old people and their meds.
Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this video from surveillance company Macroswiss. It shows off some of the robot technology they’re developing. Like a little Spybot with the built-in mini Uzi for instance, or the Hydrobot, which keeps an eye on boats using a decoy floating seagull to hide. Pretty cool stuff.

[Macroswiss]