Nov 20 2009 Creepy Robot Stares At You So You Exercise

How would you like this creepy little bastard staring at your ass when you're performing squats? Or maybe holding your feet while you do crunches? Or maybe you've got to be out of your got-damn mind!

Bandit is helping the University of Southern California Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems conduct a study on exercise training. 70 volunteers of all ages (including 20 people aged 60 or older living in retirement homes) will have either Bandit himself or Bandit on video as a trainer, and the researchers will try to figure out if the physical presence of the robot makes a difference.

That's right, they named him Bandit. As in, "Give me all your internal organs!" Listen, you want me to tell you whether a robot's presence helps you lose weight? It does -- and I'll prove it. SEND IN THE ROOMBA! *Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!* There, I feel four pounds lighter already. Oh, and I'm not cleaning that shit up either.

Video of the little jerkbag after the jump.

Continue Reading " Creepy Robot Stares At You So You Exercise "

Nov 18 2009 Dad Only Speaks Klingon To Son For 3 Years

This handsome dapper portly half-Santa isn't the man in the story, but that doesn't matter. What's important is that he practices good dental hygiene. Also, that some cat named d'Armond Speers decided to only speak Klingon to his son for the first three years of his life. But fret not, he did it with good cause: cruelty experimentation. I knew I had kids for a reason!

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers told the Minnesota Daily. "He was definitely starting to learn it."

And get this, Speers says he isn't really a huge Star Trek fan.

Does the fact that Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics explain anything -- or excuse anything -- here? Maybe. His child-rearing habits were part of a larger story on the company he advises, Ultralingua, which develops language and translation software. Including Klingon.

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that. Besides somebody get this man a 'Father of the Year' ribbon! Are you reading this B.F. Skinner? That air-crib was weak shit!

Local dad spoke only Klingon to child for three years [citypages]

Thanks to Demon Spawn and Kelly, who are only speaking jibberish to their children for six years.

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 2 2009 Great: MIT Developing Dashboard Death Bots

MIT, a school best known for not accepting me despite two super-sweet essays and several threatening phone calls, is now developing a robot companion for drivers. Why? Because we need more distractions in the car.

AIDA (Affective Intelligent Driving Agent) communicates with the driver via a small, sociable robot built into the dashboard. The idea is to develop an informed and friendly passenger, the buddy perpetually riding shotgun who aside from reading the map and helping with navigation, acts as a companion. As such, AIDA is being developed to read drivers' moods via their facial expressions and other cues (hand gestures?) and respond to them in the proper social context. It communicates back in very human ways as well: with a smile, the blink of an eye, the drooping of its head.

AIDA analyzes the driver's mobility patterns, common routes and destinations, and driving habits. It then merges its knowledge of the driver with its knowledge of the city around it, mashing up the drivers priorities and needs with real-time information on everything from tourist attractions to environmental conditions to commercial activity to help the driver make better decisions.

Yeah, but can he take the wheel? Because what good is a robot in the car if it can't drive you home? I don't need a friend in the car THAT'S WHY WE HAVE TEXTING, am I right? No, I'm dead wrong. Literally: DEAD. WRONG. Don't text and drive.

This message brought to you by the GW and everyone else who agrees that you already suck at driving bad enough without another distraction.

MIT Introduces a Friendly Robot Companion For Your Dashboard [popsci]

Thanks to Jeff, tom and Kristi, who just get lost and play 'I Spy' with themselves in the car like normal people.

Oct 23 2009 Man Pleads Guilty In La-Z-Boy DWI Case

62-year old Dennis Anderson of Bumfunk, Minnesota was arrested last year for drunkenly driving his motorized La-Z-Boy into a parked car. Anderson's blood alcohol content was 0.29, which is impressive for a sexagenarian, but if mine falls below that I start to feel sick.

Anderson's customized vehicle, seen in the police evidence photos on the following pages, is powered by an eight horsepower Kohler lawnmower engine, and has a stereo, headlights, a built-in cup holder, and a "Hell Yeah It's Fast" bumper sticker. The ride, however, does not have a seat belt. Anderson, pictured above, controlled the La-Z-Boy via a steering wheel protruding from its seat cushion. The vehicle's headrest was adorned with the logo of the National Hot Rod Association. Following his guilty plea, Anderson was sentenced to 180 days in jail and ordered to pay a $2000 fine. A judge stayed Anderson's jail term in lieu of his successful completion of a two-year supervised probation term.

First of all, I can't believe it doesn't have a pop-out leg rest. And secondly, I can't believe it doesn't have a built in cooler. Where the hell was Anderson getting all the beers? And don't tell me a beer tree because I'mma rent a backhoe and uproot that tree. I wanna know where the beer at. I want the beer. Gimme the beer -- I want the beer.

Man Pleads To La-Z-Boy DWI [smoking gun]

Thanks to Closet Nerd, Occasional Reader, Kevin, B-Rad and Lord Tarl, who would have been smart enough to kick up the leg rest (because they would have built theirs with leg rests) and nap it off.

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 15 2009 Uh-Oh: Chinese Scientists Create Black Hole

Two scientists in China have developed an electromagnetic black hole capable of sucking in and trapping microwaves (not my Kid's Cuisine!). Next stop: trapping visible light.

The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity.

A theoretical design for a table-top black hole to trap light was proposed in a paper published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their idea was to mimic the properties of a cosmological black hole, whose intense gravity bends the surrounding space-time, causing any nearby matter or radiation to follow the warped space-time and spiral inwards.

Now Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at the Southeast University in Nanjing, China, have turned Narimanov and Kildishev's theory into practice, and built a "black hole" for microwave frequencies. It is made of 60 annular strips of so-called "meta-materials", which have previously been used to make invisibility cloaks.

You can hit the link to read how the black hole actually works, but that's not what's important. What's important is that it DOES work, and we're all doomed. And here I thought my stomach was the only black hole on earth. Don't believe me? Somebody toss a cheeseburger in the air. Did you see that? Works for hot dogs too. Haha, nice try buddy -- you keep those pants zipped.

First black hole for light created on Earth [newscientist]

Thanks to Equalizer and Chris, who have both lost spaceships to black holes before.

Oct 14 2009 We're As Good As Dead: Robots Driving Tank

We can only pray this is an elaborate Photoshop hoax or we're all as good as dead. Well, you are, I'm as bad as dead. And twice as bad as that nancy Leroy Brown. That jive-talking mother ain't got nothin' on me!

Picture [pictureisunrelated]

Thanks to Daniel, who actually is meaner than a junkyard dog and once pushed an old lady into traffic.

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 12 2009 Kill It With Fire!: A Robotic Talking Piano

This is a piano, which, through the use of the black magic and robotics, is able to speak in one of the scariest voices I've ever heard. Well, besides the one that comes attached to the figure that sneaks into my room at night and tells me to write dirty things on the internet. I think it's my uncle!

Youtube

Thanks to J.D., Rodger and Alexandra, who are already planning to push this thing out a window.

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.

Oct 4 2009 Don't Tell The Robots!: Blood Powered Lamp

Awesome, a lamp powered by human blood. Because this will end well.

What if, every time you wanted to switch on a light, you had to bleed? Would you think twice before illuminating the room, and in turn, using up energy?

That's the idea behind the blood lamp, invented by Mike Thomspon, an English designer based in The Netherlands. The lamp contains luminol - the same chemical forensic scientists use to check for traces of blood at a crime scence. Luminol reacts with the iron in red blood cells and creates a bright blue glow. To use the lamp, you first need to mix in an activating powder. Then, you break the glass, cut yourself, and drip blood into the opening.

And this, my friends, is how our robotic overlords will read their Kindles at night. And I'll be damned if I become some robot's lamp juice. You hear me?! You will never take my blood! Quick, Edward, bite me! DO IT NOW, NANCY! *swoon* God I love your hair.

Lamp Runs On Human Blood [livescience]

Thanks to Dustin, who has never kissed a vampire (he didn't like).

Sep 22 2009 Idiot Moron Uses 600K Text Messages/Month

Some idiot moron, in an effort to become the world's biggest failure at life, used 662,258 text messages on his iPhone in a month. Plus the jerkbag got the 12,301 page itemized bill sent to him, so he doesn't even care about trees. I did the math, and it comes out to sending a text message just about every 4 seconds, all day every day. So I assume there was some sort of automated program involved. Also, a monster douche.

Hit the jump for two videos of the idiot looking at his bill.

Continue Reading " Idiot Moron Uses 600K Text Messages/Month "

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 9 2009 Huuuge Robot Statue Coming To South Korea

If you thought the 59-foot Gundam statue in Japan was large, boy were you wrong. Because South Korea is erecting a massive 364-foot statue (twice as large as the Statue of Liberty) of Robot Taekwon V (aka Voltar the Invincible). Scared? It gets worse. You see, the statue is being built for a new amusement park called Robot Land. Geez, talk about scarring your children for life. This is worse than coming downstairs on Christmas hoping for a Nintendo, only to find your mom gangbanging the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny underneath the tree. Nobody even ate the cookies!

giant robot taekwon v statue will be six times as large as giant gundam statue [technabob]

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 3 2009 Eeeek, Kill Them!: I-SWARM Robotic Army

Bugs don't scare me. But tiny robots? Tiny robots scare the shit out of me. Just look at those evil bastards ganging up on that defenseless screw. It's sickening.

These tiny (4 millimeters on a side) robots are members of the I-SWARM project, which stands for Intelligent Small-World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation. Each robot is simple, with three legs and a little poker to manipulate stuff with. They're designed to work in large, cheap, mass producible, replaceable groups doing things that insects would be good at... Surveillance, obviously, but they could also do things like clean your house by taking care of one bit of dust each.

No, really, this isn't necessary. If I wanted teeny little robots running around everywhere I would have killed myself and gone to hell. Because that's exactly what it's like. Except they're on fire. And they crawl in your holes.

I-SWARM Micro Robots [botjunkie] (the very thought of which makes me sick)

Thanks to Nick, Michael, MDGrein, Ashley and Skynet (screw you!), who are all cool in my book. Except for Skynet. Skynet should implode.

Aug 25 2009 Wrong, Just Plain Wrong: Two Robots Kissing

Listen, as long as you're human I firmly believe you should be able to kiss and have relations and relationships with whoever you want (provided they feel the same about you). I don't care if you're black, brown, yellow, blue, red, white, clear, striped, dotted, Canadian, from Australia, have food allergies, are bi, straight, gay or super gay, I say go for it. Robots, not so much. Robots should all burn in a fire.

Video: The first (televised) kiss between robots [engadget]

Thanks to Xavier, Mr. Robbot, Peterman, Joe Mamma, 3d, Kenneth and Captain Awesome, who swear they've never tried kissing themselves in the mirror and are all terrible liars.

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 20 2009 Screw The Future(!): Robotic Prostitutes

Robotic hookers folks, robotic hookers. Marinate on that one for a second while I down this zucchini bread. Then, I'll be back to discuss the moral ramifications of banging a robot.

It sounds like science fiction, but robot bar staff, hotel rooms that change colour, cruise ships as big as aircraft carriers and even robot sex are part of the future for travellers, a tourism conference has been told.

Even robot "prostitutes" that would not pass on diseases such as HIV could make an appearance...

"But you're talking about extreme futures."

First of all, no. Secondly, I would rather jam my penis in an electrical outlet (and have before -- now it can shoot lightning) than have sex with a robot. And thirdly, this certainly brings to meaning to the phrase 'sex machine', doesn't it? No? Well what about robo-hos?

Robot prostitutes tipped to tempt future tourists [theindependent]

Thanks to Caroline, who once pulled the old quarter-on-a-string trick and managed to score free services.