robots on technabob...

That’s right, by day Roombas are just plain ol’ cleaners, but at night, they sneak off to Lithuania and compete in underground sumo competitions.

Okay actually the 2009 Baltic Robot Sumo Cup wasn’t illegal; in fact it was sponsored by major robotics companies like iRobot and ABB. 60 robots participated in 3 categories – Mini…

Why, or why not, that is the question. Wait what? Yeah that’s right; Joe Bowers is a free man in a free land, so if he wants to build a robot that plays Rock Band on the iPhone, no one can stop him! Why the hell not Joe Bowers, why the hell not. Besides, building a…

Developed by researchers at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab in cooperation with Audi, AIDA (Affective Intelligent Driving Agent) is a drivers’ companion that offers useful information while interacting in a “socially appropriate and informative way.” AIDA will be mounted on a car’s dashboard, where it’s “face” will be visible to the driver.

As you can see…

Tomotaka Takahashi, creator of the high endurance EVOLTA robot, recently showed off his new robot, ROPID. The name is supposedly a combination of rapid and robot, so it was either ROPID or RABOT. The cute robot is about 15 inches tall and can jump about 3 inches high. It’s twisting torso also makes it an…

It may not have a classy or intimidating name, but I’m sure that robots speak of the HAROP loitering munition with great respect – or perhaps fear -  when they… get together for, um, poker night. Israel Aerospace Industries’ bad boy is a remote-controlled, unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) that can be deployed from a…

I’ve always wanted a robotic butler. You know, like the personal service ‘bots in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Except without the sexual harassment part. Turns out that a team of industrious scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have already built one. And this one delivers snacks! Sweet!

CMU’s Snackbot is a roving wheeled ‘bot who’s…

Here’s another one of them MAVs that’ll soon be flying all over the place. A group of MIT students – Abe Bachrach, Anton de Winter, Ruije He, Garrett Hemann and Sam Prentice (I think I got +10 to my IQ after spelling their names) – developed an autonomous flight system that could sweep and analyze…

I’d love to make some sort of Transformers/Allspark joke in reference to this Sega Saturn joystick, but unfortunately Gizmodo beat me to the punch. But that’s okay, ‘cause I can one-up their nerdiness by delving in to deeper detail and pointing out what, specifically, the Sega Saturn joystick transforms into. And that’s an Insecticon. “Kickback,”…

MAKE is calling this the world’s smallest R2-D2, and who knows? It might be. I’m not sure whether or not there’s a movement out there dedicated to fitting a beloved ‘bot into a tiny shell, but if there is, this guy’s creation may just be the champion of all time, since this R2 makes that…

Okay so Activelink’s Power Loader is not really a weapon, it’s a tool for heavy lifting. But so was the loader in the Aliens movie from which the exoskeleton takes its name. That didn’t stop Ripley from pwning the alien queen with it.

The Power Loader is made of 500 lbs of aluminum alloy. It’s equipped…

Construction and erection of the 18-m (59 ft) Tetsujin 28-go (aka Gigantor) statue in Kobe, Japan wrapped up a few days ago, more than a couple of weeks after the Gundam statue – the Neil Armstrong of robot statues – was dismantled. The statue, which has been set up at Wakamatsu Park in Nagata Ward…

Ever wonder what sort of stuff was running through the electronic brain of your Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner? These wonderful time-lapse photos should give you a pretty good idea of what your Roomba has been up to.