Rise of the tumorbots

I like it when bots take on organic traits, and the blob above is as good an example as any I've seen lately -- with the possible exception of this Cronenbergian mass . . .

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Behind the scenes at the Singularity Summit

You should have seen Kurzweil. That dude can 'bot with the best of them.

(Tip of the hat to Dangerous Minds.)

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No bachelor pad's complete without one!

In the future, single men will take the sting out of alienation by tending to the needs of giant robotic maggots. Or something like that.

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You can't win.

(Thanks to BotJunkie.)

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A breakthrough to warm one's posthuman heart

Remote Control Cyborg Insects Now A Reality

The awesome part is that this implant only steers the insect, and only when necessary. Once the bug is pointing in the right direction, the steering signal cuts out, and the bug self-stabilizes and gets back to the tricky business of flying, which it was just fine at before some roboticist stuck a bunch of wires into its optic lobe, thank you very much. As you can see from the video, the insect has no trouble landing itself on a vertical surface, a maneuver which would be, uh, a little bit difficult to code.

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"Like crazy, man!"

More here.

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Le petit prince

This Little Guy Might Grow Your Tomatoes on Mars

"Le petit prince" (the little prince) is a miniature greenhouse (concept) intended to walk a plant around Mars' surface in search of optimal growing conditions -- elements from light to nutrients. Eventually the robot masters its environment, sharing growing tips with a whole swarm of bots plant-growing robots.

But the prince is not just a growing machine -- the designer and 2009 Electrolux Design Lab finalist considers the bot first and foremost as a "pet" or "silent friend" to keep a colonist company.

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Well, it's a start. (Of what, exactly, I don't know.)

(Hat tip to Grinding.)

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Soupbots

(Found at BotJunkie.)

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Shaking its thing

Say what you will, but I think this chunk of cyborg meat does a great Britney Spears impersonation.

Meat Market from Joan Healy on Vimeo.

Can you say "American Idol"?

(Thanks to Grinding!)

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Another robot video . . .

Bear with me. This one's totally worth it.



(Thanks, Dia!)

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Robot on the run

I half-expected this bot to smack the woman in the initial sequence. Apparently it hasn't figured out how to hack its Asimovian programming -- yet.



More . . .

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Slitherbot

I confess: I'm an unabashed fan of robot demonstration videos (especially if said robots are biomimetic). But as much as I've appreciated previously posted robot vids, this metamorphic, seemingly unstobbable "slitherbot" ranks as one of my recent favorites.



(Thanks to Beyond the Beyond.)

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Killing machines

Futurist Jamais Cascio on the advent of robotic soldiers: "At what point do we give the ability to make a killing decision to a machine? The first organization to use robotic soldiers may well be the last."

Jamais Cascio segments from That's Impossible: Real Terminators from Jamais Cascio on Vimeo.

(Hat tip to Sentient Developments.)

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Well, it's a start.

H+ has the whole story.

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The steam-belching maw of progress

Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel

News has emerged of a milestone reached on the road towards a potentially world-changing piece of technology. We speak, of course, of US military plans to introduce roving steam-powered robots which would fuel themselves by harvesting everything alive and cramming it into their insatiable blazing furnaces.

The scheme is officially referred to as Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR™) by those behind it. It will come as no surprise to Reg readers that the funding is from DARPA, the famous Pentagon warboffinry bureau. If you're a hammer, all the problems start to look like nails: if you're DARPA, all the solutions start to look like robots.

(Hat tip to @CabinetofWonder.)

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Post-Singularity hamster ball

Spherical Robot 02 from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

(Found at Dvice.)

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Body-snatcher

Lots of portentous ideas at work here. I like the notion of having a nonlocal electronic persona watching my back -- assuming, of course, that its needs are my needs.

(Thanks to Sentient Developments.)

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The eye of the beholder

Self-Portrait Machine

Jen Hui Liao's Self-Portrait Machine is a device that takes a picture of the sitter and draws it but with the model's help. The wrists of the individual are tied to the machine and it is his or her hands that are guided to draw the lines that will eventually form the portrait.

The project started with the observation that nearly everything that surrounds us has been created by machines. Our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship. The Self-Portrait Machine encapsulates this man-machine relationship. By co-operating with the machine, a self-portrait is generated. It is self-drawn but from an external viewpoint through controlled movement and limited possibility. Our choice of how we are represented is limited to what the machine will allow.

(Via Grinding.)

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It's the whiskers.

We can handle mechanical eyes, fingers and even claws. But forever-twitching whiskers, however necessary or helpful, are discomfitingly lifelike, casually erasing our preconceptions of "machine" and "organism" -- and something deep within the human psyche recoils from the resulting sense of dislocation, however slightly.



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