Built by someone from the CKBot group at UPenn's Modlab, this terrifying little device hides in the ceiling above a cubicle. When activated, it pops up a ceiling tile and unleashes a hot fury of ping pong balls down on the unsuspecting victim. It is, in a word, amazing. [Modlab via BotJunkie]

Perhaps what makes these illustrations work is that they trust their young audience with difficult questions: Are our brains simply computers? Are our bodies mere machines? What is work, without agency? What is pleasure, without feeling? These are not things I was thinking about in 1989.

Or, you know, it could be the fact that they're utterly stunning, and look like something you'd find in an art gallery, not a rotting children's book. More at [AJourneyAroundMySkull via BoingBoing]

There was the immobile singing Poo-chi by Tiger Electronics, a company that also made the i-Cybie, which could lift its leg and roll over. The $99 Fisher-Price Rocket the Wonder Dog, which was operated via infrared headset, could burp and scratch itself. There was also Tekno by Manley Toy Quest, Big Scratch and Lil' Scratch by Trendmasters, Puppy Magic by Toy Biz and more.

Many people who had both real dogs and fake dogs decided to see what would happen when the two worlds collided.

If I had a fake dog... you know, the idea seems so preposterous to me that I can't even go there. My real dog is looking at me as I sit here on my shiny computer which is flanked by my shiny iPod and phone. "Aren't you glad I don't require electricity to operate?" he is saying with his eyes. "Don't you want to take me to the park and escape the backlit cyber world you are immersed in so many hours a day?" Why yes, Amos, I do. Now stop dragging your butt.

If these cyber versions were meant to appeal to real wannabe dog owners, I think they should've made them look a little more doglike. Would it have been so hard to slap some fake fur on these things? I'm thinking they could've gone with some Muppet fur—shaggy blue, maybe. Or Elmo red. Who wants a pet that looks like Robocop. Also: my real dog earns his keep by licking clean the dinner plates and jumping in the laps of cute guys at the park. The cyber curs had no such uses. If I'm going to shell out that kind of money for a non-breathing pet, I'd at least like if it could second as a vacuum.

Nevertheless, many robotic dog owners thought it'd be very original and clever and hilarious to introduce their real pet to their fake pet, as evidenced by the following videos...

German Shepherd doesn't let Aibo touch its meat

Sparky gets in some hot two-on-one action with a Doberman and a Chihuahua

Dog asks the Poo-Chi why it isn't wearing any clothes

A cat watches an impertinent iCybie take a pee

This particular school of cinema reached its nadir with robo-dog snuff films

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

This is Yotaro, the Japanese baby simulator. It looks like a big stuffed animal bear with a baby's face projected on to it. It's actually got a lot of complex stuff going on inside it, for better or worse. I just wonder why they didn't make it look more like a real baby if they were going for simulation. [Yotaro via DesignBoom]

Okay, so maybe the technology's not at superhero levels quite yet. The Muscle Suit—created at the Kobayashi Lab at the Tokyo University of Science—is a "wearable robot" that comes in two versions: one that augments the muscles in your lower back, which is great for workers who have to repeatedly lift heavy objects, and one for your upper body that allows you to lift about 110 pounds without any effort from your arm muscles. It's a similar concept to the HAL-5 robot suit, except lighter and geared toward specific tasks. If only that specific task were clobberin' baddies. The best part is that a practical version is expected to be available sometime early next year. [CrunchGear, Network World]

Currently, Robovie is designed to help the elderly complete their shopping rounds. At home, users enter their list into a special mobile device that Robovie senses upon entering the store. Robovie then greets the user and guides him/her through the store helping them find, carry and remember items from their list.

I can't tell you how many times I have wished that supermarkets had some sort of robot or GPS system that would guide me to wherever the hell they keep their pizza sauce and burrito shells. And carrying my groceries for me—well that's just a bonus. The whole thing might be even better if the larger carts were equipped with some sort of system like this, instead of a free-standing robot. I would love it even more if it scanned and weighed my purchases and allowed me to swipe a card instead of standing in line at the checkout. [Robot Watch via Pink Tentacle via PopSci]

Kokoro, the company which brought us those HRP-4C female androids back in 2005, will make these Actroids for Sogo & Seibu. Customers can record audio so the robots not only look like them but also sound like them, and "she also does the best work as a guide with her out-standing eye-catch effect!" Careful you don't fall for her eye-catch effect too hard, now. [Sankei News via PlasticPals and CrunchGear]

Man in a Chicken suit plays "What is Love" on Pianica from Ring Mod on Vimeo.

Man in a Chicken Suit Plays "What Is Love" on Melodica

If that headline isn't enough to make you watch this video, I'm really not sure if the internet is your cup of tea. Because this is exactly what the internet should be used for. [Boing Boing]

A Very Muppet Christmas YouTube Video

I am so, so glad that a lot of the first 1080p YouTube clips are Muppet-related. I am a Muppet freak. I can't count how many times I've seen The Muppet Movie and (my personal favorite) The Great Muppet Caper, and I've even seen Jim Henson's MuppetVision 3D, which is a real thing, believe it or not. So as my menorah's candles slowly burn down, marking the first night of Chanukah, I am watching this Christmas-themed YouTube video and giggling, over and over again. Enjoy. [YouTube]

Nao Robot Performs Star Wars Impersonations

Nao, a pint-sized robot from Aldebaran Robotics, does a pretty good impersonation of various Star Wars characters—Darth Vader, R2D2, and more. It's pretty adorable and physically it's actually one of the more nimble robots I've seen, although nobody can seem to think of anything to do with it other than make 50-second YouTube clips like this one. Still: Cute. [Engadget]

Evil Empire Google Wants Your Email

Okay, so maybe it's not so evil—Google just wants users of its Google Voice service to allow access to both original voicemails and the transcriptions Voice supplies. Right now, there's a rating system to measure how accurate the transcriptions are, but that doesn't help Google improve the system that much. With a healthy supply of voicemails, Google could figure out how to work around tricky roadblocks like external noise and accents. So, not as evil as it sounds. [Neowin]

iTunes App Pages Redesigned

Not that much to say, really—iTunes redesigned the app pages in the Store, and, well, they look better. Bigger pictures, shorter descriptions, slicker layout. Looks nice! [Twitter]

Severed Pancake Hand Grasps Waffle With Last Delicious Ounce of Strength

You guys, HELP. There is a man made of pancakes running around without a hand, bleeding jam, and he's probably hungry since he left his waffle with the hand. Why did this amazing work of art end up in Remainders? Because despite what noted breakfast-eater Rosa Golijan thinks, Gizmodo is not typically a pancake-themed site. Disappointing, I know, but true. [Serious Eats]

CoolerBot uses a tail-dragger design with 14" wheels in front and a 10" castering wheel in the rear. The caster wheel is mounted using PVC pipe. The robot is capable of moving in either direction. CoolerBot uses two NPC-41250 motors powered by a 10 amp hour 12 volt SLA battery. The logic is powered by a separate 10 amp hour 12 volt SLA battery and both batteries are recharged by the two onboard solar panels. The motors are driven by two Parallax HB-25s are which are controlled by a Propeller. Currently the robot is remote controlled through a 912 MHz Transceiver.

As far as an "arsenal" is concerned, CoolerBot is equipped with an infrared video camera and a Nikon DSLR. Check out the terror in the eyes of the bunny in the shot above. It's just waiting for a missile launcher to pop out of the cooler and reduce him to a smoking crater. At any rate, it seems like overkill unless your objective is to capture lions with their cubs or dangerously unstable celebrities. Now that is a good use for this thing...a paparazzi-bot that goes in on the really dangerous missions. [Norris Labs via Make]

Tetra's completion of an "expert class" maze in 4.7 seconds shatters last year's best by more than a second in a half, which in micromouse terms basically makes it the love child of Carl Lewis and Michael Phelps. But what makes him so good? For that we'll have to turn to this jauntily scored interview with David Otten, a 22-year veteran of micromouse competitions. Because apparently people have been racing robotic mice around mazes since at least 1987 and NO ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT IT.
[Robots Dreams via BotJunkie]

Still, I have to admit that Nao delivers a powerful performance—especially when it comes to his R2-D2 impression. Of course, that's kind of like Gary Busey playing a lunatic, but still...kudos. Outside of his skills as a thespian, Nao is also quite capable of learning and performing useful tasks for his owners. Nao has been in development for years now, but a commercial version is expected sometime next year. [Impress via Plastic Pals]

This understated "Robotic Weapon" is a paintball gun mounted on a 4-wheel-drive E-Maxx truck. It streams POV video with night vision (through Wi-Fi, we believe) while the operator can aim and fire paintballs, pepper balls or rubber bullets with accuracy from 150 feet.

And fuuuuuuuuuuck it looks like it would hurt. Pricing available upon request. [Rogers Design Group via Yanko Design]

All that crowd-baiting mugging and genital-constricting athletic gear evidently couldn't help the representative of humans everywhere, as he went down in the first to the remote-controlled robot's fierce uppercut. The robot, given the noble and awesome name of Genuine Great King Kizer, is the current model designed by Naoki Maru, who creates a new one double the size of the last every 18 months or so. The next one, obviously, is going to destroy Tokyo. [BotJunkie]

As you can see in the video above, you use the iPhone to make some simple initial music, and then the Shimon plays along to it. You can then change the style in which it's improvising and fiddle with the original music that it's playing along with.

The next step? Having it play along with real, live musicians, interacting with them and creating music together. Pretty wild stuff.

We've spotlighted Owen's work before, back when he unveiled his 20-foot fire-breathing mech. As impressive and imposing as that was, I think it might be his least ambitious project. How about a hovering bike? A flying bike? With guns, potentially? And that's just what he's tinkering with in his backyard right now, according to VBS.TV, who went to visit him in his outdoor workshop.

You can sum up the whole interview, and my unabashed Carlos enthusiasm, with his closing quote:

The ones I'm dong now blow my mind, so I can't even imagine what I'll be building in 30 years.

Damn straight, guy. You are America. [Neogentronyx via VBS.TV]

The Airbot doesn't use any magic, just a computer-controlled gimbaled air jet, "powered by a 620kPa using a direct current motor-controlled valve." Which to me sounds like magic, but whatever.

It has been developed at the University of Illinois by Aaron Becker and Robert Sandheinrich, helped by professor Timothy Bretl. The air-stream can lift any spherical and non-spherical object up to 188 grams and 97mm in radius. That includes a ping-pong ball, a bottle of water, an apple, an orange, or an onion—which will get peeled too.

It seems like an April's Fool, but the "Automated Manipulation of Spherical Objects in Three Dimensions Using a Gimbaled Air Jet" was officially presented at IROS 2009, The 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent RObots and Systems. According to their research paper, it could be used to sort small parts or handle delicate objects in production lines. [University of Illinois via IEEE via BotJunkie]

While we've gotten a look at the MyDeskFriend gadgets before, Pingo is the first one to actually be released. He's bringing a lot of cuteness, an internal speaker, a microphone, some freaky LED eyes, two proximity sensors, three ground sensors, and a two-wheel drive.

Basically this penguin bot is a ridiculously interactive alert system for news, email, Facebook updates, and whatever else you set him to check for. I say "ridiculously interactive," because Pingo reacts to pokes, shakes, and voice commands and can be nurtured and played with as if a pet. I'm sure all of those things would turn more annoying than useful or entertaining quickly, but the damn thing is way to freakin' cute for me to care.

At $149, Pingo is definitely more expensive than the Furbies it acts and looks like, but—never mind the features—the minimal creepiness is worth the price difference.

A FACEBOOK FRIEND YOU'LL NEVER IGNORE: MYDESKFRIEND, A TINY ROBOTIC PENGUIN, PLAYS, READS, CONNECTS TO WEB AND FACEBOOK

New York, NY ( December 7, 2009) – Pingo is one Facebook friend you'll never ignore.

Tiny and irresistibly cute, Pingo is the first official mydeskfriend, a tiny robotic penguin launching today at www.mydeskfriend.com.

An ideal holiday gift for anyone passionate about the latest in gadgets, robotic toys, and consumer electronics, the interactive playmate can zoom around desktops, express moods, respond to voice commands, sing songs, and read aloud email messages, headlines, stock quotes, and weather.

The device integrates into its owners' Facebook account via a Facebook application that allows users to give their device its own name, profile, and personality, as well as nurture its moods and manage its daily life.

Owners can set mydeskfriend up to read RSS newsfeeds from their news sites and blogs, spoil it with food and vitamins from a Facebook gift page, and lull it to sleep by gently rocking it in their hands. Pingo can follow fingers around a desktop, while sensory devices ensure that it never falls off a desk when moving around on its own.

Friends who have their own devices can play and communicate via Facebook, including poking, sending messages, and giving Facebook gifts directly from one Pingo to another.

The device can fit in the palm of hand and displays its moods, like happy and angry, by changing the color of its LED-lit eyes.

mydeskfriend retails for $149.99 and is available for purchase at www.mydeskfriend.com. Orders must be placed before December 14th in order to arrive by December 23rd via priority delivery service. The device is compatible with the following systems: Mac OS (10.5 and 10.6), Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

mydeskfriend is developed by Arimaz, a Switzerland-based company specializing in creating entertainment robotic devices and Internet-connected toys.

"mydeskfriend is the first of a new generation of Internet-connected robotic devices," said Pierre Bureau, the CEO of Arimaz. "It's fun, entertaining, and helpful, keeping you connected to the Internet and Facebook even when you're not online."

About Arimaz

Arimaz SA is a company active in the fields of entertainment robotics and interactive toys. Arimaz creates, develops and market products integrating the latest technologies in domains such as electronics, wireless communication and artificial intelligence. For information, contact www.arimaz.com.

[Arimaz]