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 16 2009 Uh-Oh: Little Robot Can Jump 25-Foot Fences

Boston Dynamics, a company best known for heralding the apocalypse with their futuristic death machines, is at it again -- this time manufacturing the Precision Urban Hopper.

Most of the time, the shoebox-sized robot - which is being developed for the US military - uses its four wheels to get around.

But the Precision Urban Hopper can use a piston-actuated "leg" to launch it over obstacles such as walls or fences.

The semi-autonomous, GPS-guided gadget could be used for surveillance in urban environments.

The robot is allegedly able to clear obstacles up to 25-feet high. Which is exactly why I built a 26-foot fence around my anti-robot compound. And dug a moat. Which, FYI, is filled with deadly water dragons. But not luck dragons -- Falcor doesn't like to get wet! But he does like to get high. You're so soft, Falcor. Plus you have a puppy face.

Military robot 'hops' over walls [bbcnews]
and
Youtube

Thanks to TobyRaider, Bobby, JKirchartz, Kelly, Lomig, Kyle, Laux, Jennaiii, shiny bathtub, shawn, Nikki, Fritz, Gonk Assassin, Mark, Spikey DaPikey, prestone, Matty, 2MechanicalArms and Laurent who can't even jump out of bed in the morning. It's called depression, folks, and I have it too.

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 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.

Jul 14 2009 Great: EATR Robot Feeds On Dead Bodies

Well we've already seen robots that can feed on organic matter, and now, an even scarier one. Wait, does that say chainsaw?

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot -- that's right, "EATR" -- "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material -- animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! I'm okay, I'm okay. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! No I'm not. Hold me. Lower. Little lower. Lower. What?! THIS COULD BE OUR LAST NIGHT ALIVE!

Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies [foxnews]

Thanks to everyone who sent this in. No, really, thanks -- I hate sleeping. WITH YOUR SISTER! (snores)

Jul 10 2009 In Disguise: Learn Your Secret Cyborg Name

There will come a time when we all have to wear spraypainted cardboard box robot costumes to prevent detection and subsequent elimination by our mechanical overlords. And we're gonna need names too, just in case we get sucked into a conversation with one of those chatty metallic bastards. Thankfully, somebody was able to steal this Cyborg Name Decoder from the future. As you can see, Geekologie now becomes the General Electronic Entity Keen on Online Learning, Omnipresent Gratification and Immediate Exploration. Which is pretty ironic because I AM keen on immediate exploration. You see where I'm going with this? The first date. YOW YOW!

The Cyborg Name Decoder (also available on Facebook)

Thanks to BossMan and Joemo, who once tied a brick to a robot and then lit it on fire and pushed it off a cliff while stabbing it and shooting arrows.

Jul 2 2009 Stupid Robots Can't Even Sing Happy Birthday

In honor of Canada Day yesterday and the 4th on Saturday, this is a video of three Wiffle-ball headed robots trying to sing happy birthday and failing so hard I almost felt bad. Almost. Just watch and listen. Did you hear that? It sounded like the one on the left was singing "die die die". IT NEARS!

Robots Sing Happy Birthday to UK Science Museum [robots.net] (who will be receiving a nasty email)

Thanks to Crimsonfox, who used to be Fusciafox until he painted himself to have better luck sneaking into the henhouse.