Here at BotJunkie, we don’t shy away from robot sex. That said, some of you may be a bit leery about our past coverage, so let me assure you that this post is purely satirical and literary in nature and is SFW.

The Good

WIRED Sex Drive columnist Regina Lynn has made up a list of “10 Reasons I’d Rather Marry a Robot” after reading David Levy’s new book, Love + Sex With Robots, which I am currently in the middle of and highly recommend. Here are her first two reasons:

1. Robots are more than sex machines.

Levy gives an example of a robot that can predict human movement well enough to dance without stepping on its partner’s feet. Fancy footwork might even be the top reason women will choose robotic partners: Sex is easy to find, but dancing? Good luck finding a man who is both a) available and b) willing to try.

2. Artificial intelligence is still intelligence.

While a robot partner would never be my equal in a relationship — it can’t be, as long as I control the on-off switch — it could still challenge me intellectually. According to Levy, romantic robot AI will include emotional and social intelligence as well as analytical smarts. And if AI advances so much that robots develop self-will? The whole “could a human love a robot?” question becomes moot, as the robot is now officially a person. Either that or the roles will reverse, and the robots will use us as sex slaves.

Click here to read the other eight reasons over at WIRED.

After the jump, we get to bad+ugly (and hilarious, if you ask me). (Read more…)

You might remember Robosaurus, created 17 years ago by Monster Robots in Southern California. The 40-foot-high, 31-ton behemoth quickly became famous for crushing cars and breathing fire all over the country, before dwelling in the land of obscurity. Apparently, it’s current owner or owners are finally sick of burning and crushing all manner of large things. Robosaurus will be auctioned off during the annual Barrett-Jackson car auction in Scottsdale, Arizona between January 12 to 20.

Interestingly, the metal beast is actually controlled by a pilot who occupies a cockpit inside the dinosaur’s head. All I can say is, that Pilot has incredible self control to have not gone all Godzilla on a small town or two. Just pray you don’t see this thing and it’s new owner coming down your street anytime soon.

[Robosaurus] VIA [Cnet]

Now, don’t go getting too excited… You’re not going to find any trace of Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker or even Jar Jar Binks in the new live action TV show that George Lucas has just begun working on. No, it’s going to be something completely different, focusing on minor characters in the Star Wars universe, and according to Lucas, all about “the life of robots.” Let me emphasize that this is in the very early stages (Lucas is currently looking for writers), and there’s little else in the way of information, but I have high hopes, since Lucas has had reasonable success with robot characters in the past. Roger, roger.

[ LA Times ]

A little treat for the weekend. Here’s a kick-ass 13-minute CG mini-movie that takes a look at what World War II would have been like if giant robots took part in the fighting. I have to say this is the best CG movie I have seen in or out of theatres in a long time. The guys who made this need to have a Dreamworks contract and NOW! If Spielberg and Lucas were still making good movies, something like THIS would be the result. The videos have been around since April, but the coolness factor demanded that it be chronicled here at BotJunkie. Part 1 is above, with part 2 here.

[SFSignal] VIA [TechRepublic]

We’ve all seen our share of musical robots, but Lev is somewhat unique. He’s a pretty accomplished theremin player. And when you think about it, the theremin is the perfect instrument for a musically inclined robot. It’s that eerie sounding instrument you’ve heard a million times in old Sci-Fi and horror B-movies.

Lev’s not new. He’s been performing for years. In 2003 he even played a performance at the Artbots 2003 show in New York. He was built by Ranjit Bhatnagar at Moonmilk Laboratories. The videos are kind of hypnotic. Both are the song “Crazy”. In the first video, it’s Patsy Cline. The second video is Gnarls Barkley, and has Lev accompanied by a robot drummer named Thumpbot, using some unusual objects as drums.

I wonder if Lev and Thumpbot could handle some AC/DC or Led Zeppelin.

Second video and links after the jump.

(Read more…)

Believe it or not, I didn’t sign up for Arse Elektronika just for performances like Friday night. No, I’m exploring deep epistemological (or whatever) issues relating to the interactions between robots and humans, and it just happens that in this case, those issues are being explored via the most primal of mediums: sex.

There were quite a few talks at Arse Elektronika between Saturday and Sunday (you can read all the abstracts here), but I’m going to focus on the presentation that was the reason I decided to spend my weekend there. It was entitled “Pornomechanics: Sex Robots and the Mechanisms of Love.” I’ll be using some mildly naughty words in this post, but nothing explicit, so read on.

(Read more…)

By Evan Ackerman

Some of the content in this post may be (who am I kidding, definitely is) NSFW. It includes naughty words and explicitly sexual interaction between a robot and a human. Click more if you’re okay with that. (Read more…)