Trailer For Sundance Hit ‘Robot And Frank’ [VIDEO]
‘Robot and Frank’ stars Frank Langella as an old man forging an unlikely bond with his Peter Sarsgaard-voiced robot butler, which starts off as an odd-couple comedy and then turns into a heist film, because Langella used to be a jewel thief. It looks pretty great, and they loved it at Sundance. Take a look.
Korea Has Robo-Guards Roaming Their Prisons [VIDEO]
A group of scientists in South Korea has developed the world’s first completely autonomous prison guard. Far from being a glorified Roomba, the robo-guard was “designed to study human behavior, the robot is able to detect abnormal prisoner activity and report back to its controllers.” Click through for the video.
DARPA’s New Military Robot Can Run Faster Than You [VIDEO]
Oh, good, more things from the future to terrify me. Boston Dynamics, a Pentagon contractor, has broken the speed record for legged robots, with a new four-legged creation – the Cheetah, which can run at 29 kilometres an hour, far outpacing the 20 km/h record set by MIT in 1989.
This Is The US Military’s Incredibly Creepy Robotic Quadruped [VIDEO]
Thanks to Hollywood and entertainment media when we think of robots we tend to imagine humanoid machines, sometimes so closely resembling their real-life counterparts that the two are almost indiscernible. Because of that, there’s nothing that can really adequately prepare for this headless robotic monstrosity conjured up by the bright minds at DARPA.
Flying Robots Build Six Metre Tower [VIDEO]
Hello, future. A group of autonomous flying robots – “quadcopters”- have been used in an installation by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to construct a six metre tall tower out of 1 500 foam bricks. The robots are completely autonomous, with a networked computer vision system directing the placement of the bricks.
SPL!NG Movie Review: Real Steel (2011)
If you can adapt a theme park ride into a billion dollar blockbuster franchise about a drunken pirate holidaying in the Caribbean, you can adapt just about anything. That’s how we got Real Steel, a film that producers will vehemently defend against anyone claiming it’s an adaptation of the iconic tabletop boxing game, Rock ‘Em, […]
Porsche Is Designing A 57 Storey Highrise With Car Elevator
Porsche is designing a $650-million, 57-story highrise to go up in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Which isn’t that big of a deal. What is pretty insane, however, is the fact that the highrise will feature a robotic car elevator that takes condo owners directly to their door while still in the vehicle.
Robot Revolution With A Friendly Face
Robots have been the subject of countless science fiction tales and blockbuster movies, most often portrayed as malicious machines that have become independent of their creators and use their inherent advantages to rise to the top of the food chain. Until very recently, this type of scenario could only ever exist in fiction.
Robot Nominated As Torchbearer For 2012 Olympics
This is just the start. Soon we’ll be giving them the vote. A three-foot-tall robot called the iCub has been nominated to participate in the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2012 London Games, partially to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth, and partially to creep people out with three-foot-tall, fire-wielding robots.
Foxconn Increases Reliance On Robots For Manufacturing
Because robots can’t get depressed over awful working conditions and commit suicide, you see. Also we don’t have a robot union yet, so Foxconn (the guys who manufacture the iPhone and iPad) won’t need to worry about the slowly increasing factory worker wages in Taiwan, which are driving overhead costs upwards throughout the fancy-technology-making-industry.
Amazing, Lifelike Dental Practice: Japanese Robot Opens Wide [VIDEO]
The girl pictured is actually a robot named Showa Hanako 2. She was originally developed as a tool for dentists looking to practice new procedures, but is now able to recognise voice commands, turn her head and open her mouth real wide! Before your mind ends up in the gutter, see the video as to why she’s designed like that.
This Danish Professor Has A Robot Clone, For Some Reason
I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d want a robot clone too, it’s just not totally clear why Henrik Scharfe, professor at Aalborg University, actually got one assembled by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan. It’s ostensibly the first android with a beard, though, so yay science.
Johannesburg Traffic Lights Stripped For Unlimited Phone Calls
This is sort of cool and sort of awful. Jozi thieves have stripped about 400 ‘high-tech traffic lights’ of their sim cards, modems and GPS systems, using the sim cards to make unlimited free phone calls. It will cost about R8,8 million to replace these fancy, legitimately robot-like traffic lights. Regular GPS-free traffic lights are unaffected.
Suicidal Robots
Last week’s Antimov competition challenged amateur engineers to build robots that broke one of the Three Laws or Robotics – which you’d know if you’d read I, Robot (nerd) or saw that movie where Will Smith had the robot arm. No, the robot arm was not called Eva Mendez.