If these weren’t already sold out, I’d be all over them. At $45 each (there’s a set of 6), these 6.5″ tall ‘Bertie Mk2′ figurines are beautifully battle scarred in that way that made Wall-E so endearing. More pics:

As I said, the pre-order is entirely sold out, but hopefully these robot toys will become available again in January.

[ Tenacious Toys ] VIA [ Boing Boing ]

If I don’t write about robot movies as much as I could here on BotJunkie, it’s because we tend to focus on robots that either are real, or have at least some realistic potential. This is why we covered Wall-E (there are real ones!) but not Astro Boy, and why I’m especially interested in a new movie script that DreamWorks just picked up by robotics expert and our second favorite Keepon snuggler, Daniel Wilson. Called ‘Robopocalypse,’ the movie (based on a book that’s coming out in 2011) “explores the fate of the human race following a robot uprising.”

“Daniel H. Wilson’s cautionary tale of man vs. machine grabbed us from the very beginning,” said DreamWorks co-president of production Mark Sourian. “Wilson’s background in robotics and artificial intelligence grounds his story with a frightening level of realism.”

And that last bit, of course, is what makes this movie so appealing: hopefully, it’s going to be well reasoned and realistic with a solid foundation in robotics, and it’ll remind us all why we should be terrified of our Roombas.

[ Daniel H. Wilson ] VIA [ Variety ] and [ io9 ]

As if you don’t have enough distractions while driving, the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s SENSEable City Lab have teamed up to create AIDA, a robot that lives in your dashboard, is way smarter than you, and has no compunctions about letting you know it:

AIDA is actually watching you while you drive, paying attention to your expressions and even measuring your galvanic skin response through the steering wheel. Based on your driving habits, AIDA will suggest how you can be safer or more efficient. The robot is designed to use expressions to intuitively convey information, something that MIT has a lot of experience with. You know who AIDA reminds me of, though?

AIDA may have her dad’s skinny neck and blocky head, but her face is all mom.

I’ll bet you can’t guess who’s helping sponsor this project… Here’s a hint: it’s not Pixar. Yep, it’s Audi. AKA Volkswagen. AKA the robot car company. AIDA was, in fact, developed in partnership with the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab out in Palo Alto. It’s really, I dunno, inspiring or something to see a major car company investing so much in future technology. Next time I buy a new car, which is probably going to be never (94 Volvo wagon FTW!), it might very well be a Volkswagen, especially if it can park itself.

[ AIDA ] VIA [ MIT ]

Willow Garage’s PR2 robot has a pretty good idea of how to plug itself in if it needs recharging, but what if it can’t find an outlet, or it needs some additional help? This concept animation (which includes mechanical movements that the current version of PR2 can’t execute) explores some of the potential for the robot to express what it wants to a human using physical motion, and what they’ve got demoed here totally works on me in a way that a flashing “charge me” light never could. I might even call it Wall-E-esque.

One more behavior simulation, after the jump. (Read more…)

Coming up this weekend here in the Bay Area is Maker Faire, a festival of awesomeness that celebrates people who, you know, make stuff. You remember Maker Faire from last year, where we had a whole bunch of this and a smattering of this, followed somewhat shockingly by this? Yeah, that’s right. It looks like Pleo took a little bit more damage than we might have thought at the time. Anyway, this year ComBots has been folded into RoboGames (which takes place just two weekends later), but that doesn’t mean that Maker Faire will be devoid of robot action. Quite the contrary, I hope, with everything from combat robots to Russell the robot giraffe to who knows what else… But that’s part of the fun. We’ll be doing our best to post pics all weekend, both here at over at OhGizmo.

Buy tickets here.

[ Maker Faire ]

Flickr user Photo David has a nice set of pictures of a miniature Wall-E figurine in a variety of adorable situations. I think you can get the entire set of figures at ThinkGeek. A couple more pics, after the jump. (Read more…)

From Wikipedia:

Yatter-Bark: This dog-shaped robot was designed by Gan’s father as a prototype rescue robot, but was never constructed. It is finally completed by Gan in the first episode and is immediately put into action against the Dorombo gang. It is fitted with a siren and a bell like other rescue vehicles, and also a joystick (all of these are operated by the robot itself) which control the various other features of the robot. Unlike the “time bokan” series of time machines in the original show, it does not provide a cockpit for the crew–the robot is clever enough to obey the words of the Yatterman duo, who simply hang on to its sides.

The robot itself does not pack much of a punch in terms of combat strength (save for its nostrils which fire iron pellets, and the two firehoses on its back). In fact, it is often temporarily defeated each time by the villains’ mecha in later episodes. One element, though, remains the key feature to the heroes’ turning point: a bone-shaped power pack, known as “Mecha-Tonic” as Gan has named it, is usually fed to the dog robot on its very point of total defeat, allowing a sudden outburst of strength to ward off a deadly blow from the enemy mecha. It will then proudly announce (with the aid of three tiny dog-shaped robots popping out of its chest and do a drum roll) and perform its special attack–a large group of miniature robots, usually taking the shapes of land-based animals, that comes out of its mouth. Then these mini-robots will attack the Dorombo’s mecha by taking it apart piece by piece with their concealed weapons, causing the enemy’s mecha to explode spectacularly, leaving just pieces of scrap metals, and a very dirty, tattered villain trio behind.

I don’t get it at all, but the live action movie has already been released in Japan.

[ Yatterman Movie ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

This cute little guy is bOb, a bugbot from Wayne Pouton’s line of little DIY machines. “He is a bit skittery and likes to get into mischief, but don’t worry just make sure you have PP3 to keep him out of trouble!”

Who’s PP3? “PP3 likes to be in charge, he’s been the boss of all the machines since the beginning!”

Well, I’m not much for the storyline or whatever, but they’re neat little bots. bOb and PP3 are both available from Antigravity in the UK for about $14.

[ Antigravity ] VIA [ Technabob ]

I’m spending all day today at the RoboDevelopment Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, CA. Last year was all kinds of fun, so I have high hopes for this year. We’ll be seeing people and robots from Stanford, Festo, and Disney/Pixar, just to name a few. I’m not entirely sure what my posting schedule is gonna be like for the next day or so, since there may or may not be readily available wireless at the expo, and the next two days after that I’ll be in Los Angeles covering the 2008 LA Auto Show. In any case, I’ll be taking plenty of exclusive robot pics and vids, and I’ll stick them up here as quickly as I can get my hot little hands on some internets, so stay tuned!

[ RoboDevelopment 2008 ]

I guess that Hello Kitty special edition Roomba we saw back in September must have actually suckered in some poor hapless obsessive fans, because iRobot is kicking out another 400 unit special edition Roomba 530, this time with a WALL-E theme. As huge a fan as I am of WALL-E, I have to say, the $875 pricetag is just ludicrous. For $875, you could get yourself like four of the superior 535 models and have change left over. For that matter, you could buy one 535, and then commission Pixar itself to paint some WALL-E artwork on it and still probably come out ahead. If I haven’t convinced you how dumb of an idea it would be to buy one of these, you’ll find them at the Disney Store in the Tokyo Disney Resort on November 20th.

Incidentally, WALL-E comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow. And if you didn’t catch the BURN-E vignette during the appx. 2 seconds that it was up here, you’ll be able to catch it on this DVD.

VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]