The insane epicness of this movie cannot possibly be overstated. And somehow, the fact that it’s overdubbed in Russian makes it just that much more awesome. It’s called Robot, and if you get a copy, send it to me. Immediately.

Update: the full movie is here on YouTube (all 2+ hours of it), with English captions!

VIA [ Laughing Squid ]

These hexrotors aren’t doing anything special, really… It’s kinda cool that they’re being used as camera platforms, but that’s nothing new. I just thought that since most of the time when we post pictures of women it’s because they’re creepy robots, you might enjoy some 100% human swimsuit models for a change. They’re being followed around by some hexrotors that admittedly are able to take some pretty cool video:

The hexrotors come from Mikrokopter by way of Aerobot, and the swimsuits come from Hive Swimwear.

VIA [ Hacked Gadgets ]

[ Tom Gauld ] VIA [ Eggshell Robotics ]

I’ve accepted the inevitability that robots are taking our jobs, but it takes a truly evil mind to design a robot to put Grandmothers out of work. This robot cake decorator works sort of like a Spirograph; the cake rotates in a circle while an arm moves back and forth depositing frosting. A separate arm drops those little silver balls that you wonder whether you’re really supposed to try and eat. It was designed by Katherina Mischer and Thomas Traxler, who helpfully included a picture of a redundant Grandmother:

[ mischer'traxler ] VIA [ DesignBoom ]

I love this picture, but the especially cool bit is that the artist (Drew Olson) took the time to explain what he was going for and how he did it, including how the piece changed as he was drawing it:

“For this image I tried to channel some of my main influences, and some of my favorite robots. I’m a big fan of the bot designs from Miyazaki’s “Castle in the Sky” and “Nausicaa”, as well as the clunky “The Iron Giant” look. I like how they’re fantastical, yet somewhat grounded in reality.

I wanted to create the sense that the robot is broken down, and whoever is in that hut has been there for a long time. I’ve heard a couple of different interpretations on what people think is happening in the image, but my original idea was for the pilot of the bot to have become marooned on an alien planet, powering his life support from the robot’s energy.

This piece came together fairly quickly, but I had to work through some other more unsucessful ideas first. A lot of the time when I’m starting an illustration I’ll start with a few quick thumbnail sketches and choose one. From that point I’ll work up a black and white rough, and then begin to lay down color washes on top. However, this time I just started drawing, and edited the piece as I went along. There were variations where he was in a more desert environment, and one where instead of a hut there was a city on a hill, making him look HUGE. As I worked on it I changed it to a jungle planet, added the hut, and changed the face design a number of times.”

There are (currently) five more images in this series from Robot Entertainment, in which video game artists are given free reign to create a piece of robot concept art. Check out the others at the link below.

[ Robot Entertainment ] VIA [ io9 ]

iRobot Roomba 560, 45 minutes

Neato Robotics XV-11, 12 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Sweeping Mode), 15 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Mopping Mode), 23 minutes

Three very different robots, three very different cleaning techniques. Check out the individual reviews for more details on each.

[ iRobot ]
[ Neato Robotics ]
[ Evolution Robotics ]

Have you ever felt uncomfortable asking people for money? So has Chris Eckert, so he built a robot to help him out, named Gimme:

Gimme is a two axis numerically controlled sculpture that pans a room looking for people. Once found, the machine tracks a person, cajoles them into making a donation, and resumes scanning the room searching for potential donors.

The sculpture is controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini. Stepper motors are driven by two Pololu A4983 Stepper Motor Driver Carriers. The microcontroller, stepper drivers, and sensors are all mounted on a custom circuit board made with Eagle CAD.

While I absolutely love the construction of this robot, I’m not quite sure what to make of the bare eyeball… Part of me says “cute!” Part of me says “get it away from me!” But for the purposes of this robot, that’s probably perfect: first it draws you in, and then when it’s too late, you have to pay it to get it to leave you alone. Genius.

[ Gimme ] VIA [ Make ]

This, I’m told, is a robot swan. A Swedish robot swan, which may or may not explain why it looks like it does… Only having been to Sweden once, I’m not qualified to have much of an opinion on their fauna. This particular Swedish robot swan has been taught to dance, of all things, as part of a collaborative project between the computer science and theater departments at Mälardalen University.

The actual choreography was done by Åsa Unander-Scharin, a professional dancer, who programmed movements into the swan’s wings, neck, beak and feet. Apparently, the performances move people to tears, and spectators have described the experience as “touching”, “fascinating” and “beautiful.”

I won’t go all crazy about this because you’ve heard it before, but it’s a fine example of how expressing emotion is (or at least, can be) entirely unrelated to things like human facial features. If you want to get humans to develop an emotional connection with a robot, forget the literal approach to humanness… All it takes is some simple movements and careful attention to programming to make even the most basic of robots appear to display emotions themselves, and elicit an emotional response from us.

[ Mälardalen University ] VIA [ Physorg ]

BTW, the first Google Image Search result for “robot swan” takes you to a webpage for “robot swan king.”

Just let that sink in, you’ll get it in a sec.

David Guttenfelder, chief photographer for Asia for The Associated Press, has 18 beautiful pictures of Japanese robots and robot culture on the photography blog of the NY Times. The link below is definitely worth your time.

[ NYTimes.com ]

Robot plants are not new to BotJunkie, but creepy ones are. Not that this robot plant is intended to be creepy, but like everything in the Uncanny Valley, it just sort of ends up that way. Or maybe it’s just me.

Each of the plant’s 169 artificial leaves is controlled by a piece of shape memory wire. When cameras mounted above the plant see your hand move over it, it signals the plant to shimmy its leaves in the same area in response to a ‘virtual wind.’

Plant (that’s what it’s called, “Plant”) was designed by Akira Nakayasu, and will be on display at Ars Electronica 2010. Pic of Plant sans leaves, after the jump.

VIA [ Designboom ] and [ Gizmowatch ]