Robots

Robotic Sculptures Are Surveillance Cameras in Disguise

Viewers may be mesmerized by the whirling propellers and twitching legs of Bjoern Schuelke’s interactive sculptures. But these robotic artworks come with a sinister surprise. Armed with tiny cameras, the sculptures stare back at the viewers, quietly recording the people around them.Schuelke’s sculptures feature motion sensors that allow the robots to identify and take aim…

io9 Lauren Davis

Are We Feeling Dehumanized Yet?

Now that we’re living in a technological wonderland, you’re in constant danger of losing your humanity. It’s just a fact — every scientific or medical advance makes us that little bit less human, and every time you play with your Google Android or eat another stem-cell sex donut, a few cells of your body transform…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Oki’s Comfy Leopard Office Chair Has a Robot Leg at Heart

You may have thought the Embody chair was all very high-tech…but it’s got nothing on Oki’s protoype Leopard chair. It’s got a robot-leg in its design. Based on Oki’s well-named Robot Leg walking robot, the chair is motorized: when empty it perches up in the air, waiting for your butt to settle against it. When…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

ObamaBot Dutifully Hides Aspirations for 2016

The ObamaBot has been a patient contributor to the Obama presidential campaign. After being assembled for $250, the 6-foot metal and wooden robot took to the streets of Florida waving signs to promote early voting and now President-elect Barack Obama. From a technical standpoint, the robot is apparently “powered by hope,” which seems like a…unique…approach…

Tech News Mark Wilson

US Military Pretty Much Commissions a Real-Life Gordon Freeman Power Suit

The Office of Naval Research just threw a $1.6m grant at some UCSD researchers, to be used to build a “field hospital on a chip”. The system will monitor a few biomarkers for deviations from safe levels, at which point it will automatically medicate its wearer. While the military hopes that such a device could…

Tech News John Herrman

Transformers 2 Features The Weirdest Robot In Disguise Yet

Rumor has it Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen features yet another new kind of Transformer – one which could make Sam Witwicky’s love life very complicated. Is there nothing those robots can’t disguise themselves as? Click through for spoilers. Sources tell the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog that Alice (Isabel Lucas), the sexy girl who…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders

Robots Turn on Humans, A Photo Essay by Robots for Robots

We’re sorry, fellow humans. As of last Halloween, our reign as supreme beings of the Earth has ended. Robots, cleverly disguised as our readers, documented the first stages of robotic upheaval. And to those with weak stomachs, we simply cannot recommend reading on.Second Runner Up, Uyen Thai We think the horror of this image speaks…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Google Robots Ordered to Fight Zombies on Halloween

Halloween is a scary day because you never know when some undead miscreant is going to try and harvest your brain. That’s why, as Matt Cutts discovered, Google has ordered its robots to disallow any brain-hungry zombies from…well…eating brains. I’m not sure exactly how this zombie spotting and robot deployment works, but now we can…

Tech News Adrian Covert

Amazing Costume is Either a Kid Dressed as a Mech or a Mech Dressed as a Kid

Happy Halloween! Bad news! Your costume sucks compared to this kid’s, which is amazing. It’s a homemade chicken walker mech costume, and it is so badass I can’t quite put how badass it is into words. I think between this and the Lil’ Mega Man costume we can conclude that Halloween is the best time…

Tech News Adam Frucci

Freakishly Real Jules Robot Now Makes Faces Right Back At You

Click to viewWe’ve shown you Jules the robotic head before, but now a team of scientists have added real-time human expression mimicking—and taken him marching right across uncanny valley. A team at the University of Bristol, UK, have combined Jules with some analytical software that looks at a person’s face and tweaks Jules’ 34 servos…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

25 Years of Strange and Wonderful Carnegie Mellon Field Robots

On one hand. robots have come a long, long way in the last 25 years. On the other, 3/4 of the Gizmodo staff is still wiping their own butt. Regardless, Carnegie Mellon is hosting an excellent gallery documenting 25 years of their Field Robotics Center robots. This guy, called the “Terragator,” was built in 1984…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Air Force Wants Bat-Senses In Micro Spy Drones For “Urban Combat”

We’ve seen bat-like drones, and even heard of genuine bat weaponry, but now the Pentagon is after micro UAVs with genuine echolocation bat-senses, for real. The Air Force has just awarded a new contract to develop swarms of micro drones that use bat-inspired echolocation for navigation through the complex airspace in urban environments cluttered with…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

Truly Scare Neighbour Kids with CNC-Carved Geek-o-Lantern

With just one day to go, the novelty Halloween pumpkins have been slowly building up: but I say none of them, none, have the scariness factor of this. It’s a geek head pumpkin, geekily precision-carved using a geekily cool open-source DIY CNC machine into a genuine geek pumpkin. OK, so the last part is a…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

Caption Contest: Girl and Her Robot Dog

“At least she’s not riding an octopus, for once.” An artistic recreation of the Boston Dynamics robot, which DARPA is quite interested in as of late. [bbGadgets]

Tech News Mark Wilson

Halloween Costume Competition: Robots Turn on Humans

From our last post on the matter: With Halloween around the corner, there’s one thought that scares us more than any other. It’s not Dracula or reanimated corpses. It’s not TP’d houses or razor blade candy. It’s the day when robots turn on humans in the battle for Earth. And to prep for the event,…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Robotic Insects Could Build Human Habitats on Mars Before We Arrive

Move over bristlebot: Europe’s I-SWARM program is developing some similarly small but much smarter micro ‘bots that could be used to build human colonies on Mars. The tiny machines would be dispersed in huge numbers, working automatically and independently, and also collaborating together to form larger compound ‘bots able to do physical stuff like moving…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

Robot Ants Will Pave the Way for Martian Colony

When the first human colonists arrive on Mars, they could find a nice warm science lab and living quarters waiting for them, all built by thousands of tiny ant-size robots working and thinking collectively. European researchers are hard at work developing swarms of autonomous microbots. They can also do some other neat things aside from…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

Factory Robot Becomes Bartender for the Evening, Grovels for Tips

TMCO is a manufacturer of metal products in the bustling metropolis of Lincoln, Nebraska. Not exactly somewhere you’d expect to find experiments involving robotics. But here we have a video of one of its factory robots that’s been suited up with a shirt and tie and taught to man a set of beer taps. It…

Tech News Adam Frucci

Darpa Wants Bigger, Smarter BigDog ‘Bot To Help in Combat

Boston Dynamic’s BigDog is already an impressive and freakishly animal-like beast, but Darpa it seems has bigger plans in mind and is asking for a smarter, bigger BigDog. The upgraded robot needs to carry 400 pounds of payload, run 20 miles on any terrain and survive un-refueled for a whole day to please Darpa’s request.…

Gadgets Kit Eaton

Robo-Dog Wants To Go Outside Now

Researchers at the University of Georgia have designed a new robotic service dog, which can perform all the tasks a service dog can, including fetching items and opening doors. The robot responds to verbal commands. With service dogs costing $16,000 plus two years of training — and with a five-to-seven-year waiting period for a service…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Robotic Sculptures Are Surveillance Cameras in Disguise

Are We Feeling Dehumanized Yet?

Oki’s Comfy Leopard Office Chair Has a Robot Leg at Heart

ObamaBot Dutifully Hides Aspirations for 2016

US Military Pretty Much Commissions a Real-Life Gordon Freeman Power Suit

Transformers 2 Features The Weirdest Robot In Disguise Yet

Robots Turn on Humans, A Photo Essay by Robots for Robots

Google Robots Ordered to Fight Zombies on Halloween

Amazing Costume is Either a Kid Dressed as a Mech or a Mech Dressed as a Kid

Freakishly Real Jules Robot Now Makes Faces Right Back At You

25 Years of Strange and Wonderful Carnegie Mellon Field Robots

Air Force Wants Bat-Senses In Micro Spy Drones For “Urban Combat”

Truly Scare Neighbour Kids with CNC-Carved Geek-o-Lantern

Caption Contest: Girl and Her Robot Dog

Halloween Costume Competition: Robots Turn on Humans

Robotic Insects Could Build Human Habitats on Mars Before We Arrive

Robot Ants Will Pave the Way for Martian Colony

Factory Robot Becomes Bartender for the Evening, Grovels for Tips

Darpa Wants Bigger, Smarter BigDog ‘Bot To Help in Combat

Robo-Dog Wants To Go Outside Now

Artemis 2 Crew Become First Humans to Travel Beyond Earth Orbit Since the 1970s

Artemis 2 Day 2: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

Labubus Might Be Labu-Bust After Pop Mart Posts Record Share Loss

Cursor’s New Tool Lets Users Delegate to a Team of Coding Agents

Nvidia Needs to Remind Itself What PC Gamers Actually Want

Iran Says It Hit Oracle Facilities in UAE

‘Invincible’ Season 4 Is Doing Right By Debbie

New Theory Says We’ve Been Overcomplicating the Big Bang

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

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MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

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