Nov 10 2009 Close Calls: Killer Robot Plane Goes Rogue, Is Shot Down Before It Can Turn On Its Master

An autonomous killer Reaper jet recently went rogue in Northern Afghanistan and had to be shot down before it got the chance to go berserk and blast the shit out of the blue team. Eff that!

The aircraft was flying a combat mission when positive control of the MQ-9 was lost. When the aircraft remained on a course that would depart Afghanistan's airspace, a US Air Force manned aircraft took proactive measures to down the Reaper in a remote area of northern Afghanistan.

It wasn't clear from the US military announcement whether the erratic death-bot had turned on its masters and was planning an attack on critical US logistics bases located north of the Afghan border, or whether it had sickened of reaping hapless fleshies like corn and was hoping merely to escape. Alternatively the machine assassin may merely have succumbed to boredom or - just possibly - a mundane, non-anthropomorphic technical fault of some kind.

Okay, I don't know exactly how this fits into my government/robot conspiracy, but I assure you it does. Importantly. Like the last piece in a very critical puzzle. Provided my dog didn't eat any pieces. Because then I'll have to cut a similar shape out of construction paper and color it with markers. AND IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. My parents will tell me you can barely tell the difference BUT YOU CAN TELL. You can tell.

Robot Fighter Jet Killed Before It Could Go AWOL [io9]

Thanks to AdmiralN00b, Shawn, Beanbones, Paul, Timothy, Anonymous, Sambob, That Guy and Jason, who are all welcome to stay in my anti-robot shelter, provided they shower. And spoon.

Nov 10 2009 No: Roombas Programmed To Play Pac-Man

Been waiting for someone to hack a bunch of Roombas to play Pac-Man? Me neither, but somebody did AND YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH THEM OR I'M GOING TO TOOTHPICK YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU.

The vacuum, long an instrument for chasing cats, has now been turned against its own. What better use for automatic home appliances than to have them chase each other in classic video game style?

Built using our spare time, Roomba Pac-Man is designed to showcase the extensive Unmanned Aerial System software suite that we have developed to support our personal research. It was also a great opportunity to use some of our skills for our own entertainment.

Neat idea, but did you have to use robots? Why not kittens? I mean, you just handed over like $1,500 to the iRobot company. Which, despite the number of emails I've sent, the government still refuses to classify as a terrorist organization. OPEN YOUR EYES YOU BUREAUCRATIC BUTTPLUGS! Unless....OMG the government's in bed with the robots! Initializing expatriation! New Mexico here I come.

Project Site

Thanks to Jonny S, mary, Jackie and Boomer, who vacuum the old fashioned way: with a shaggy dog taped to a broken tree branch.

Nov 6 2009 Wow: LHC Shut Down Over Piece Of Baguette

Apparently coming back from the future to destroy itself isn't the only problem the Large Hadron Collider has to face, now it's being sabotaged by crumb dropping birds. CODE BREAD! CODE BREAD!

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

Wow, that's -- what's the word I'm looking for? Pathetic. And by pathetic I mean damn yeah I left that baguette there. YOU AREN'T DESTROYING MY WORLD, LARGE HADRON COLLIDER! Next time I'm bringing jelly.

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really) [popsci]

Thanks to Futuju, Stephen, Kristi, you've got mail and sham, who tried to train squirrels to sabotage the LHC with acorns but the little bastards just kept hiding them.

Nov 3 2009 Giant Crack In Africa Could Be Future Ocean

Because I love news heralding the end of the world as much as you do, I just read a large crack has recently formed in Ethiopia and may house a future ocean after the apocalypse of 2012.

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.

The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

A new study involving an international team of scientists and reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds the processes creating the rift are nearly identical to what goes on at the bottom of oceans, further indication a sea is in the region's future.

Note: That's not an actual photo of the crack there, that's just a picture I ripped off the internet. However, I will use this time to propose that the Grand Canyon will also house a future ocean. I called it first! Unless it doesn't happen, in which case it was your idea. Idiot.

Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean [yahoonews]

Thanks to Josh, who's smart enough to know the oceans were created when God cried after realizing just how beautiful he'd made me.

Oct 26 2009 If You Can Watch This And Not Be Freaked Out There Is Something Wrong With You

Boston Dynamics (my arch nemesis) is at it again, this time with PETMAN, a bipedal walking robot, who, despite its name, actually hates all living creatures.

Biped robot the balances dynamically using a human-like walking motion. It is a close relative to BigDog, sharing elements of the mechanical design and control.

PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the US Army. Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.

Just watch and tell me that's not scary. Especially how it catches itself after being pushed at 0:25. I swear, you mount a couple machine guns on this thing, and presto, you've got yourself a real-life Terminator. Listen, Army -- you really want something to test your chemical protection suits on? I've got a whole neighborhood full of people I don't like. You think about it, I'll start marking doors.

Boston Dynamic
and
Youtube

Thanks to Tobyraider, who knows the only good walking robot is one who can't walk and isn't a robot.

Oct 20 2009 Scientists Want to Develop Robotic Cheetah To Chase You Down, Dine On Your Carcass

Because life is progressively becoming a series of nightmares, scientists want to develop a robot that mimics the movement of a cheetah so they can chase us down and maul us to death. Why did I even get out of bed this morning? Oh, right. Well why did I even wake up this morning?

Professor Sangbae Kim designer of the Stickybot and a Robotic designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is trying to understand how he can replicate natural animal mechanisms by creating a robot inspired by the cheetah.

The idea is to build a prototype robot from a construction of lightweight carbon-fiber-foam that will then be able to match the cheetah's speed of 70 miles per hour.

Over the next 18 months, Kim and four other MIT graduate students are going to start constructing the prototypes. Starting with a computer model of the robotic cheetah to establish the optimal limb length, weight, gait and torque of the hip and knee joints.

It's an ambitious project. Current wheeled robots are efficient, but can be slow in rough terrains. For instance, iRobot's PackBot, which is used by the U.S. military, can only travel at speeds of up to 5.8 miles per hour.

I'm sure this seemed like a good idea to somebody at some point, but it's not. Like I don't have enough to worry about without a 70 MPH cheetah-bot running around. Also, like four children. And you wonder why daddy drinks in bed all day!

Cheetah Inspired Robot [geekygadgets]

Thanks to Excaliber, who I will use to slice through these bastards like room temperature butter.

Oct 14 2009 Pop It Like A Beach Ball!: Shape Shifting Bot

iRobot, a diabolical company best known for convincing millions of housewives to allow rug-munching robots into their homes, has now developed an air-filled shape-shifting robot that will climb into your bed and smother you while you sleep.

Unveiled at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) yesterday, this palm-sized troublemaker is being billed as "the first demonstration of a completely soft, mobile robot using jamming as an enabling technology." The "jamming" in question is something called "jamming skin enabled locomotion," which traps air and a collection of loosely packed particles in a package made of silicon rubber. When air is removed from the pocket, the silicon restricts and seems to solidify. The robot consists of several of these pockets, which can be inflated or deflated separately, giving the device the ability to perform simple actions.

The first part of the video explains how the technology works, but the actual bot-test begins around 1:50. Sure, it may look like a harmless beach ball, but do you know how many people drown each year trying to retrieve beach balls that have been swept out to sea? Now multiply that by every single person on earth and you have an idea of this thing's killing potential.

iRobot shape-shifting ChemBot is back, and it's bad [engadget]

Thanks to JKirchartz, hayden, NF, Michael, Tuggis, matt and We'llmissyoujehudah, who vow to pop every last one of these things with fiery arrows. Good looking, guys, but you might wanna brush up on your archery.

Oct 11 2009 Speak For Yourself: Scientists Claim We Would Never Survive A Zombie Apocalypse

According to a couple of Canadian researchers, the human race could never weather a zombie uprising. Pfft, speak for yourselves, Canucks -- I'M A SURVIVOR!

Based on models of rampant infectious diseases, say researchers, civilization would be doomed if we were ever attacked by zombies.

If society were ever attacked by zombies, we would probably be doomed, and quickly. That was the conclusion of two university researchers in Ottawa, Ontario, who set up mathematical models hypothesizing zombie attacks as infectious diseases with the well-known characteristics of zombie biology from popular fiction. In fact, according to a July BBC News report, zombies are more threatening than virulent diseases because they can regenerate (unless decapitated or incinerated, of course). More troubling was the researchers' presumption that zombies move slowly, as in older movies, but in recent fiction, they're super-quick, making them nearly invincible.

Oh man, as much as I do respect a couple of Canadians with calculators plugging away at a mathematical model they created using the info they gathered from Shawn of the Dead and Zombieland, this is one blogger who isn't succumbing to the zombie apocalypse. Robot, sure, but not zombies.

News of the Weird: Based on models of rampant infectious diseases, say researchers, civilization would be doomed if we were ever attacked by zombies [yahoonews]

Thanks to Gideon, who isn't going out in any sort of apocalypse. Except perhaps a sexpocalypse. Just kidding!

Oct 9 2009 That's No Playground, That's A Dieground!

Apparently Giganta was a piece of robotic playground equipment available in the late 70's for really sadistic playground designers. I'm just thankful the Baptist preschool I went to didn't have one or I may have not made it past five. Seriously, who the hell would want to play inside the cage-like belly of a two-ton robot? You've got to hand it to the manufacturer though -- I love how they awarded themselves a fake prize for the product to make it look better. "Miracle Medalist", that's great. What's the real miracle is that Giganta here didn't send kids running into oncoming traffic.

Playgrounds From the 70s [make]

Thanks to BiSScuiTT, who grew up playing with bears in the woods like a normal kid.

Sep 29 2009 I'm Not Sitting On It: Real Robotic Transformer

This is a real-life Transformer (OmniZero.9, the brainchild of Takeshi Maeda) that can morph from a humanoid robot to a humanoid robot that can carry a person, to a wheeled cart. Just watch how scary it is when it moves. If I didn't know better, I'd swear there was a little person in there. But there isn't! Just wires and servos and a metallic heart of death. Which, true story, only beats for the destruction of the human race. And speaking of which: One time I competed in a three-legged race solo.

Hit the jump for a video of the robot battling another, much smaller one.

Continue Reading " I'm Not Sitting On It: Real Robotic Transformer "

Sep 25 2009 THERE IS NOTHING OKAY ABOUT THIS

This is a video of the government's latest flying cyborg beetles in action. That's right, ACTUAL LIVE beetles being remotely controlled via implanted electrodes. Just wait till the government gets its hands on you!

"We demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radioequipped miniature neural stimulating system," the researchers reported in their new paper for Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. " The pronotum mounted system consisted of neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver-equipped microcontroller and a microbattery."

The research, supported by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is part of a broader effort, called the HI-MEMS program, which has been looking specifically at different approaches to implanting micro-mechanical systems into insects in order to control their movements.

OH HELLLLLL NO. You show me one person who thinks this is okay and I'll show you a got-damn freedom hating communist. Just sayin', I saw that sickle and hammer tattoo!

Video: Pentagon's Cyborg Beetle Takes Flight [wired]

Thanks to Danny, Mycropht, Bo, Mike, Zach, Jason, Peterman and TobyRaider, who already have government chips implanted in their brains that make them irresistible to women. WHERE WAS I ON THAT, THE MAN?!

Sep 17 2009 Zombie Shooting Targets Now Available

Tired of shooting at the same boring silhouettes when you're getting your gun on? Well why not prepare for the imminent zombie apocalypse and get your pew on at the same time with these zombie-themed shooting targets?

Full color Zombie Poster Targets. Designed for fun at the range or for your next league's Zombie Shoot. Features shaded scoring lines in both head & brain that cannot be seen at shooting distances.

Prices start at $1.50 a pop and decrease with quantity ordered. I just bought 1,000 so I could get them for $0.69 AND I DON'T EVEN OWN A GUN! Now lasers, lasers are a different story. You will never take them from me! I'm looking at you, future Amendment XXXII. Cold dead hands, just sayin'. *pew pew!*

Product Site

Thanks to Patrick, who once beat a paper zombie target to death with a shovel. You know, for principle.

Sep 15 2009 Are You Out Of Your Damn Mind? Alternatively: Oh Helllllllll No: A Needle Wielding, Blood Sucking Robot

Can you count the number of things wrong in the picture above? If you answered, "every single one", congratulations, you are correct. You see, Bloodbot is a robot designed to stab you with a needle. And I think we can all agree: that is exactly NOT what Jesus would do.

The robot consists of an arm with a needle and a probe. In order to find an accessible vein, the robot probes around your arm until it finds an area of flesh that is a little bit less squishy than the rest. Then it jabs you with a needle, and when it feels a little pop indicating that it's punched through into a vein, it knows to stop the jabbage, lest it go right through the other side of your vein, out the back of your arm, and into your femoral artery, causing a massive amount of hemorrhaging that will no doubt kill you in minutes.

So far, the robot is accurate about 78% of the time.

Hell no. Helllllllllll no. I don't care if it's accurate 110% of the time, no robot is getting anywhere near these precious, alcohol filled veins with a needle. I'd rather stab myself in the heart with a cannonball. And not just because I'm a pirate, but I do love booty. Seriously -- back that thang up, wench!

Bloodbot Stabs You Like A Pro [botjunkie]

Thanks to Spikey DaPikey and qix, who once stabbed a pair of robots in the eyes with syringes full of acid and made them melt from the inside out. Nice, guys, I like your style.

Sep 11 2009 Noooo!: Prego-Bot Gives Birth To Robo-Son

In one of the most f'ed up things I've seen in recent history, the University of Arizona Medical Center has a robotic woman that gives birth to a robotic son so that medical students can witness the horrors of robotic birth firsthand.

Named Noelle, she grunts, screams, yells at the doctors, pees, bleeds -- and yes, even gives birth (to a cute little robot baby named Hal).

Paid for with a $40,000 grant from Miami-based Guarnard Scientific, the university bought Noell, baby Hal, and another, smaller robot-baby in January. Then Noelle was taken out of commission for a while when medical students (yelp!) broke her pelvic bone.

an average of 20 medical students a week diagnose all sorts of birth complications like cesareans and breach births. Noelle can even hemorrhage, all while screaming in pain and yelling things like "don't touch me" at the medical students.

Great, at this rate she's gonna have like 1,000 babies a year. WHO KEEPS KNOCKING THIS ROBOTIC BITCH UP? I'm looking at you, shifty night patrolman! DUM DUM DUM!

University of Arizona Medical Students Help Robot Give Birth to Baby Robot [phoenixnewtimes]

Thanks to Demon Spawn, who get it pregnant with like thirty little devil babies.

Sep 8 2009 Robotic Bear Will Kill You In The Hospital

This is a promotional video for RIKEN's RIBA, a robotic pedo-bear that was designed to pick hospital patients up out of their beds and discreetly crush their genitals. Yeah, no thanks. Oh, and don't let the Whinny the Pooh music in the video fool you, this robo-bear would maul your whole damn face off and wear it like a mask for a single pot of oil. Don't believe me? Ask Piglet.

Couldn't find him, could you? Draw your own conclusions.*

*Tigger and I roasted that delicious son of a bitch.

Youtube

Thanks to ANON, who once got Pooh so high he ate like forty jars of honey and then tried to rob a hive at gunpoint.

Sep 2 2009 Tactical Canned Bacon Has 10-Year Shelf Life

Sure we've seen canned bacon before, but I don't want to seem I give preferential treatment to one pig's belly over another, so here's Tac Bac! Like its competitor, this bacon is good for TEN FREAKIN' YEARS. Buy now and you can eat the very same can in 2019 while huddled in your basement praying the robots' heat sensors can't reach you down there. Each tactical can will set you back $16 and contains approximately 54 strips of fatty pig. Definitely not the cheapest thing to survive on, but it's worlds better than ten year old Ho-Hos and Ding Dongs, which, I don't care if they're the last things on earth, are still illegal.

ThinkGeek

Thanks to MDGrein, JFreezy, stereotypical, Harsh, Cpt. Awesome, Ste, Hammer, Dave, LucidSteel, Bryan, shogunu, and anyone I may have missed, you are all welcome to take shelter in my robot-proof lair, but only because I love sausage fests.

Sep 2 2009 Japan To Build An Outerspace Power Plant (To Power The Robots Of The Apocalypse)

Somebody better blast a proton torpedo through this thing's auxiliary exhaust port or it's game over, man. I'm serious too -- if you don't think this thing isn't gonna be powering our metallic harbingers of death, you're delusional. So, yeah, Japan is coughing up $21 billion to have a bigass solar panel floating around in space and sending the energy back to planet urf.

[The power station] will beam enough energy back to Earth to power 294,000 homes. With no cables.

The whole deal is being put together by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and industrial design company IGI Corp. The plan involves a gigantic solar panel floating around in space, soaking up a gigawatt of energy and beaming it to Earth without the use of cables. And they hope to have it ready to rock within four years.

Wow, you're not gonna wanna get in the way of that energy beam. Because one time I stood in front of a satellite internet dish for too long and 0101001010 10011 00001 01010010 1010 010100111 0101. Whoa, what just happened -- and why are my pants wet?

Japan to Spend $21,000,000,000 on a Power Plant in F%#king Space [gizmodo]

Thanks to Brian and Schmitty, who know the only the only good station in space is a topless service station with a Slush Puppy machine and lots of candy.

Aug 20 2009 Wonderful News: Robots Learn How To Lie

In an experiment that shouldn't surprise anybody with half a brain that sleeps with a giant robot-burning laser under their pillow, scientists have shown that robots have the ability to evolve and lie. And this is to one another -- imagine what they'd tell a human! Also, this quote is kind of long, but it's interesting and important to read if you want to understand the experiment. However, if you just want to type FIRST! in the comments and not learn anything, you should probably skip it (and then off a building). Did I say skip? I meant dive. Just kidding, I don't care.

In an experiment run at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland*, robots that were designed to cooperate in searching out a beneficial resource and avoiding a poisonous one learned to lie to each other in an attempt to hoard the resource.

The experiment involved 1,000 robots divided into 10 different groups. Each robot had a sensor, a blue light, and its own 264-bit binary code "genome" that governed how it reacted to different stimuli. The first generation robots were programmed to turn the light on when they found the good resource, helping the other robots in the group find it.

The robots got higher marks for finding and sitting on the good resource, and negative points for hanging around the poisoned resource. The 200 highest-scoring genomes were then randomly "mated" and mutated to produce a new generation of programming. Within nine generations, the robots became excellent at finding the positive resource, and communicating with each other to direct other robots to the good resource.

However, there was a catch. A limited amount of access to the good resource meant that not every robot could benefit when it was found, and overcrowding could drive away the robot that originally found it.

After 500 generations, 60 percent of the robots had evolved to keep their light off when they found the good resource, hogging it all for themselves. Even more telling, a third of the robots evolved to actually look for the liars by developing an aversion to the light; the exact opposite of their original programming!

Notice how I bolded that last line? Reread it. Anybody else see something inherently wrong with that? Now, if you will recall the first law of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. See where I'm going with this? OUTERSPACE BITCHES, I'M NOT WAITING AROUND FOR THIS SHIT TO GO DOWN.

Evolving Robots Learn To Lie To Each Other [popsci]

Thanks to Sarah, biggity2bit, greg, Phil, John, Pepper, Sven, Shawn, Rossco, Terrance, timpeva, ffffffffffffffffffffffffffff, SharaSue, Sn0zz, SeanJon, billcollider, Tyrogyro and yayinternets, who only lie about their age and marital status.

Aug 17 2009 Canadians Create Mathematical Model For Successfully Surviving Zombie Apocalypse

Since there's no hockey on some Canadian mathematicians have shifted their efforts to creating a mathematical model for surviving the zombie uprising. And you said nothing good ever came out of Canada! That guy, right there -- he's the one that said it. GET HIM, CANUCKS!

Anyway, the model focuses on modern zombies, which are "very different from the voodoo and the folklore zombies." It takes into account the possibility of quarantine (could lead to eradication, but unlikely to happen) and treatment (some humans survive, but they still must coexist with zombies), but shows that there is only one strategy likely to succeed: "impulsive eradication."

"Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time," they concluded.

Pfft, I came up with a better model than that. It goes like this: me + shovel = zombie - head. Zombie - head = that zombieskin rug I've always wanted in front of the fire place! Now, who wants to make out on top of it?!? I'm not sick, you're sick.

Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack [wired]

Thanks to Dahbie, who will survive the apocalypse no matter what because of jet propulsion (I'm coming with you).

Aug 3 2009 Toyota Develops Running Humanoid Robot

Nice one, Toyota -- a running humanoid robot. Because that's just what we need. Please God tell me that's actually a person in a robot costume.

[The video] from Toyota demonstrates the running capabilities of the new humanoid robot. The robot takes a step every 340ms and has no contact with the ground for 100ms of that. Notice in the video how the robot remains balanced even after pushed by the human

Did you read that? Did that not sound like it was written by a robot? "...pushed by the human"? So eloquent. You know, robots DO make the best writers. BEEP BOOP BOP. Oh that? Nothing.

Toyota's running humanoid robot [make]

Thanks to Mih0, Matt and Pew Pew Jenkins, who can all run faster than the Gingerbread Man and are gonna need to when these things hit full production.