animatronic on technabob...

When I first heard there was a business called Gorilla Robot Factory, I assumed they’d be some sort of hipster design company, a recording studio, or maybe some Web 3.0 startup. I never figured that they’d actually make gorilla robots. My mistake.

And that’s all they do. But if you’ve got a need for an animatronic gorilla robot, they’ve got…

This huge animatronic Gort robot comes to us courtesy of the classic 1951 science fiction flick, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Now, this imposing fella can be yours if you’re ready to pony up the dough.

Up for auction over on eBay (current bid is over $4000), the museum-quality replica is eight feet tall, and features some remote-controlled mechanical…

Back in the day, I did my stint designing lighting and sets for community theater companies, so I’ve seen more than my share of wooden acting. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen metal acting.

The RoboThespian is a life-sized robotic puppet, designed with one mission in mind — to entertain. Created by UK interactive exhibit builder Engineered…

Old robots never really go away — they just come back to life singing new tunes.

The gang over at Boing Boing have introduced me to this strange new trend of taking the old animatronic animal musicians from Chuck E. Cheese / Showbiz Pizza Place and reprogramming them to play modern tracks. The result is at once disturbing and hilarious……

This nifty bit of robot footage comes to us from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

Back at the end of 2005, the Institute developed two animatronic dinosaurs (one Tyrannosaurus Rex, one Parasaurolophus) that could actually balance and walk without any external stability systems. This is the first time I’ve seen any footage of them in…