Learn Robotics The Orb Swarm Way

The Orb Swarm is slowly taking its place in history: The Institute for Personal Robots in Education has included an image of the Orb Swarm in the ...

Skinned Toys

. . . that reveal the robots underneath. I know this has been seen elsewhere, but here it is with a whole lot of other things, not the just Barney...

OrbSwarm Update: Our Babies Can Draw Circles!

The exhausted, late night, absinthe-laced parental pride could just be cut with a KNIFE around here people. . .The Orb Swarm Horde has done it agai...

Rat Neurons running robots

New Scientist reports that the University of Reading has made a robot using neuron’s from a rat brain. The robot’s biological brain is ...

Pentagon’s Unmanned Spokesdrone Completes First Press Conference Mission

I love the onion. Rarely topical to robots, but they hit now and again…

David Byrne Bot

We’ve always had our suspicions about David Byrne, but it just makes us love him more. David Byrne has teamed up with our pals Hanson Roboti...

Magical Bridge Youtube Copout

It’s lazytimes here at the Robunker, so for your eddification I would present to you a really cool magical interactive stepping stone bridge:...

“Broken” robots video lyrics

For those who were interested in the lyrics to the previous German song “Kaputt”. Full lyrics after the jump Dein Vater ist kaputt ...

Robots and Representational Democracy

A little tidbit for all of you in the greater Bay Area - Ken Goldberg, robot god of UC Berkeley, will be speaking at Science Cafe on August 18th a...

Spanking New Inertia Labs/Surveyor Robot Kits

A couple of our favorite robot guys from back in the day, Inertia Labs, are just pleased as punch and pink with enthusiasm to show of their spiffy ...

Sad Broken Robots

Tain’t nothing sadder, truly: The song, appropriately enough, is called “Kaput”. And remember, meat puppets, be nice to your rob...

Autonomous Paintball Sentry

More dangerous than BBs, funnier than live ammo, it’s a sentry paintball gun! Adding to our obsession with everything related to Aliens, thi...

Messing About With Tiny Tiny Swarm Bots

Here’s a wee small infotaining video from New Scientist that talks about prototypes for what could eventually be nano swarmbots. The video i...

Justin Grey’s Beautiful Disaster

Lem over at Robots-Dreams was musing about this pic he came across on the interwebs, and wanted to know more about it. Well, my friends, this ro...

Tesla Coil Guitar Amp

Okay not technically a robot, but let’s file this one under “kinetic art”:

Exoskeletons March On

(FYI: We will be fumigating for corny headlines during routine maintenance, thanks for your patience) There has been quite a bit of talk about ma...

Robots make your dreams come true…

Ah, the joy that robots bring into your life. Four years ago today (August 1st), I married the best girl in the world. She’s the best presen...

Boundary Bots Bust Border Barbarians

And how! The limeys seem to be stepping up their use of technology in the British shouting-and-killing-people trade. That’s giving Jerry one...

This Guy Really Uses His Li’l Projector

I dunno who all reads this but seeing as I tend to swear, if not like a sailor, at least like a visiting cabin boy, y’all are probably okay w...

Autonomous Helicopters

Because who does not love light, aerodynamic aerial cuisinarts with minds of their own? These hellys are already doing tasks in Asia and elsewhere...

Lego Mindstorms - Still Hot Ten Years Later

Or cold, actually, given average temperatures in the stratosphere on a given day. The High Altitude Lego Extravaganza kicked off on July 29th (or ...

Leetle Orbies Wobble Their First Steps

Everyone present cried and took lots of pictures: Yes, that is a diagram of a wee small orb’s first shaky foray into autonomous movement. W...

The Old Arena Is Dead, Long Live The New Arena

So, last Friday we went to our trusty place where we keep things, Nimby Space, in beautiful West Oakland, California. We took all the bits and piec...

Music To Be Lased To Death By

Here’s a cheery little tune that appeared in my inbox the other day. The song is by We’ll Write, “the only post-apocalyptic, qua...

RoboJellies

For those of you sitting around doing frak-all with your Saturday night (like me), I present an oldie but a goodie: From RoboCentral: AquaJelly is...

Todd Blair and the Gear Wall

It’s always hard to have one of your own down. The accident happens, the drama occurs, the people flurry to help, it’s what everyone&#...

Cthulhu Lust

Want. One. Sadly, they are sold out, O

Mechwars Are Go!

A bunch of those kooky kids down at the Trossen Robotics Community have been kicking around resurrection of a neato robot competition. Mechwars is...

Fire Breathing Robo-Horse

This enigmatic creature came to our attention this afternoon, because we are sucker for things that whinny and breathe fire and frighten small chil...

Mechanicrawl

For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Long Now Foundation presents Mechanicrawl this Saturday! San Francisco has a plethora of autom...

Telephonic Sheep

An now, an ode to Technology: These sheep were made by Jean-Luc Cornec and displayed at the Frankfurt Museum of Communication. And yes, it is a sl...

Choe U Ram’s Robotic Art

Beautiful organic spooky robotic art. THIS is what we’re talking about!

Your Living Room Is Secretly Sears Point

Seriously, it is. All’s you need is a couple of these remote control cars an a few off the shelf parts, and a nice long stretch of summer af...

An Instructable-icious FYI. . .

Instructables has extended their Robot Contest for another few days, so get building campers!

Pico Johnny At RoboGames

Here’s yet another video of RoboGames 2008, courtesy our pals at Trossen Robotics and featuring the tiniest Johnny 5 that ever was at this pa...

Robot Comics Contest Winner

Artifical Intelligence and Robotics alerts us to this nifty little contest that the fun-lovin’ folks over at the International Conference on ...

Eeeny Beeny Surgical Birdie

Okay we’re catching up here after the onslaught, and in an attempt to regain some semblance of relevance, we bring you a DaVinci surgical rob...

The Trons

Self playing robot band! A great way to post without actually posting anything! They even have a MySpace just like a pink, squishy, organic band....

Stickers! It’s About %@#$ Time!

So, for all of you playing along at home, you know that long, long ago, in a living room far, far away we had these nifty little sticker numbers fo...

Clothe your shiny metal torso

With this appallingly awesome T-shirt from wearscience. More scientific! awesomeness here. The rotor realizes he has erroneously been spelling &#...

Hexapod Robot Table Router = Awesome

That’s pretty much all I have to say about that. *My* hexapod merely mopes under the table and frightens small children. This darling litt...

Happy Plant Makes For Joyous You Interaction!

Please to meeting delightful friend Pekoppa plant! “Heal yourself with this plant, which is a good listener!” Two way interaction most desi...

Pictures, Memories, Twitching: RoboGames 2008

Now that RoboGames has come and gone, here are a few choice tidbits for you to remember it by (we will be over here being reminded of the event by ...

Woot! RoboGames Results!

A giant thank you to all our staff volunteers competitors and everybody else who made this all happen! The results for this year’s RoboGame...

The Cute Hurts Us

This happened at RoboGames, you shoulda been there.

RoboGames In Full Swing!

Scott Beale of Laughingsquid has posted some awesome photos and video from RoboGames 2008 this weekend! If you are in SF, stop by on Sunday!

The Verdict: Death to Pleo!

Just a taste of what might be in store at Robogames. Although most matches are slightly more even.

Sweet Mercy! Robots!

Posting is gong to be even lighter than usual this week, as we are counting down to RoboGames show week next week! If you just can’t come to...

Wall-E Takes A Walk

So I know you are just aching with anticipation for Wall-E to come out on th 27th of June, but why not go completely gooey over this incredibly, in...

Monkeys Make Peace With Robots, Gang Up On Humans

Radioactive Jam, our Barbie-sparkle-pony-princess-poptart-eating man in the field, send us this little gem about monkeys that can control robots wi...

Mars Phoenix For The Win!

Mars Phoenix has joined Spirit and Opportunity on the surface of Mars. It’s just landed, S and O are probably just waiting for Phoenix to cle...

Chief Cook Robot

On the road, a blogging failure, but this just in from Sylvain Canon at Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), Ecole Polytechnique Fede...

What the heck is a “robot” anyway?

I wrote this for Servo magazine - the magazine about robots that you should be subscribing to. In 1921, Karl ?apek wrote the play Rossum’s Univers...

Servo Your Cocktails

I did! (I know, I know I’m *sorry*) This month’s Servo has an article I wrote about Roboexotica 2007, which was a hill of fun and sho...

Not Your Mom’s Spider Bot

Giant mechanical spiders take away some of the hurt in the world: Just *listening* to it is awesome. See the giant stompy monster action from a...

Cocktail Robots Are Part Of The Geek Gestalt

Ya Rly: Daniel Terdiman, tech-journo-about-town, popped in at our RoboexoticUS setup cocktail party thingy and this is what he had to say. Also, S...

All Your RoboExotic-US Are Belong To Us

Roboexotica, the international cocktail robot festival lands on US Soil. Finally. Mechatiki has info for us: We will see you all then, Saturday, ...

Maker Faire Was The Best Of Times

Sorry for blog silence of late, there’s only one of me and sadly I can only be in about three places at once. . .We just wrapped up Makerfair...

SWARM Rocks To Kraftwerk

A wee small video from the always obliging Caroline Miller (Mills): You so, so wish you had been there. Okay except for the 110 degree all day eve...

The Orbs, They Swarm

We satisfied several orbalicious fantasies last night, as The Swarm got to roll around the crowd during Kraftwerk’s set at the Cochella Music...

Coachella, Ho.

And of all of you campers playing along at home, Le Rotor Supérieur y Yo, La Simoncita, are here at the beautiful Coachella music festival with the...

Nerdsalon Tonight In San Francisco!

So, we’re all running around here like freaking Robot Chickens, so here’s a quick little thing to go to tonight if you are in San Franc...

Soooooooo talented: Robots, steam punk, and 3D.

One of the cool things about RoboGames is all the people we meet from different walks of life. Most are not engineers. Many are artists, some are...

A Trip to The Uncanny Valley

Robot Evolution, for your watching pleasure, because we’re freakin’ busy over here: [Thanks Rochelle!]

And Now, For No Reason At All. . .

. . .A video of a Russian screw-drive assault machine: [Thanks Joanne!]

RoboGames And Instructables Robot Contest!

Instructables and RoboGames are pleased as a center punch to announce a new and spiffy Robot Building Contest! Robots are never going to take over...

Robot Restaurant

Those wacky Germans. They’ve done away with human waiters. Replaced them with robots. From the BBC: Germany likes to call itself the “...

Andre Kutscherauer, bot artist

Sweet 3D renderings of very whimsical robots. Want one. Andre Kutscherauer [via Bot Junkie]

Gas Robot Puts A Cybernetic Tiger In Your Tank

Further proof that the Netherlands is still cooler than we are: Payment is automatic too. It just magically gets debited from one’s account....

Coarse and long and very very strong

Clean your exhaust port with Android toilet tissue

Cardiac Tapeworm

At least, that is what I can’t help thinking. The folks at CarNAYgie Mellon and some other excessively smart people have come up with a kic...

Radiolab Blogs The Orb Swarm!

The Orb Swarm has been blogged by Radiolab, a show on WNYC that explores and experiments with science, philosophy, sound and everything else. They ...

A Musical Jump-Start To the Morn

So seeing as the denizens of SuicideBots have a think for Kraut rock, eclectica and robotics, the delightful Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid sen...

The Thinker

Nexi, From MIT

Here’s a spiffy thing sent along by the irrefutable Amacker Bullwinkle: “My friend Mikey is on the crew that just did Nexi. . .his girl...

Roll-Your-Own Humanoid

In an effort to shamelessly promote the extreme cleverness of what we do behind the scenes here at Suicidebots, and to prove that we can walk the w...

Robot Takes over Int’l Space Station

The New Space Station Robot Asks to be Called “Dextre the Magnificent” “In a surprising and potentially troubling request, the n...

This Should Not Be Funny

And yet, it is high-larious. At least for me. But I’m easy.

Papercraft Robot Stationery

There are some freaking stupendous papercraft artists out there, but nothing beats this excellent mock up of an *actual piece of paper!*: Yeah, ...

This Proclamation Seems Familiar. . .

Robot Evolution May be Mirroring The Evolution of Life According to [Han Moravec, founder of the CarNAYgie Mellon’s Robotics Institute], ou...

Tales of the Mundane and Fantastic

This machine holds the same sort of fascination that backhoes and pile drivers do: large, loud, cool industrial machinery, used for completely bori...

ASCII Robot Bunnies For Easter!

Or Passover, whatever. I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE SOUNDTRACK! AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [cough]

Suicide Bot. No Really.

Those clever Aussies. Really now. A Man Built a Robot To Kill Him. And Succeeded. An 81-year-old man from Burleigh Heads, Australia, downloaded p...

Slava Robotam

I luv luv luv ????? ??????? (loosely translated - “word of the robots” (although with Russian grammar, it could also work as “Wor...

Big Dog

Big Dog, Blah blah Boston Dynamics Etc etc Little Dog, DARPA d3ThB0t, etc etc, BTDT. But none of that makes up for how freakin’ eerie this th...

Robots as Fine Art

This is like the sixth time Worth 1000 has had this as a theme, but it’s cool each time: RoboRen 6 There’s about 40 different fine art...

Robotic ball thrower for your dog

I swear to god I thought of this years ago. But my dogs don’t chase balls, so I never got around to building one. Anyway, for those people t...

OMG! First ever robot movie star!

There’s a new DVD out, Houdini: The Movie Star, which features the serialized B&W silent “The Master Mystery” (1919, 238m, C...

Completely Pointless Pneumatic Awesome

This is why science is sexy: I am having beautiful visions of the Punkin Chunkin contest in Delaware. Boredom is an amazing force.

Oh, It’s ON, EL-E. . .

Or rather it would be, if Chassis were not a lover, but a fighter. Dallas Native Designs Fetching Robot Charlie Kemp, a transplanted Dallasite ...

RIP Joseph Weizenbaum

She was the first one I had ever met. I was a freshman in college, alone and scared in this strange place called Connecticut; I was lonely and it ...

Battlebots Returning To TV?

So there has been a humongous amount of foofaraw and kerfuffle bout the possibility of Battlebots coming back to TV. We here at SB are enthused by...

Speaking Of Evil Killer Robots

Apropos of Whurley’s account of his near-death robot experience, imagine what they coulda done with another robot and a giant bulletproof ro...

They Have Finally Penetrated The Upper Echelon

Because when robots appear in Marie Claire Italia, they are well and truly part of the popular lexicon: [Thanks Le Boing]

Elmo Live on Speed

This Elmo Live is kind of creepy, but nothing a little lighter fluid (or a microwave) won’t fix. For $60, it’s worth seeing how hackabl...

Chassis’ Debut!

Finally, here is a little snippet of video of Chassis being put through his beer-serving paces. Notice the Head Rotor operating in the background,...

Why You Should Never Let A N00b Drive

Whurley alerts us to teensy weensy, tiny, itty bitty almost nonexistent leetle accident that happened in the parking lot of BarCamp Austin featuri...

Tilted Twister

Apparently, the in thing this season is Rubik’s Cube Solving robots. They were all over Irex, and now we’ve dug up this little nible...

Oh dear…

The Rotor was afraid we had met our match when he came across this: Topless Robot. Pretty awesome, except maybe for the TOTAL LACK OF TOPLESS ROBOT...

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Not the video. Shriek. Click for full version. If you liked that, you should look at some more of Brandon Bird’s paintings. Like this one.

Because We Have Been Delinquent. . .

. . .The Squid beat us to posting our wonderful new RoboGames 2008 poster, created by the superlative Josh Ellingson, upon whom Mr. Robotics has a ...

Hanging With Chassis

In yet another episode of living the life you wish you had, last Friday I extracted myself from the RoBunker and went to witness The Head Rotor and...

Robot Racing at the Triple Ay-Eye

We journeyed to the southland last Thursday nigt to partake in a fun little event organized by the the AAAI, or the Association for the Advancement...

Robots Really *Are* Dreamy. . .

So maybe androids don’t dream of electric sheep, but thanks to a new project by artists Brendan Burns and Fernando Orellana, they can dance a...

I’ll Tell You One Thing, They’re Not Building A Playhouse For The Children. . .*

It appears there is some sort of machination going on over at Instructables which merits mentioning. Mostly because the robot is cute. I am su...

Furby Abuse

Subtle Product Placement In Fine Cultural Settings

So, being Feverish I like to augment the pain of illness with the pain of exceptionally violent, bloody cinema - I think it has something to do wit...

I’m Sick.

Therefore in honor of Valentine’s day, here are some robot pole dancers: They were at The Big Day Out this year down under. [Thanks sharp...