Robots

Robot with Rat Brains Learns to Avoid Obstacles; Holy Crap, a Robot with a Rat’s Brain

A group of mad scientists from Reading University in the UK have hooked up a bunch of rat brain neurons to a circuit board and gotten it to control a robot. What resulted what a robot on wheels that used its rat brain to avoid running into obstacles. How unsettling! This is no ordinary robot…

Tech News Adam Frucci

MechRC Looks Menacing, Heralds Cylon Invasion

Here’s the MechRC, a user-friendly, fully-programmable robot that uses a gamepad to control 17 precision servos which provide 180-degrees of movement. It looks Cylon-class badass in this shot, but from a normal angle it’s more a black Optimus Prime than a human-killing bot. The MechRC has an electronic and mechanical expansion system, so you can…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

First All-UAV Air Force Combat Wing Takes to the Skies Sans Pilots Over Iraq

Last week, the 174th Air Force Fighter Wing flew its last manned combat sortie over Iraq in F-16s, which have now been mothballed in favor of MQ-9 Reapers. This makes it the first combat-specific wing to ditch conventional aircraft entirely and toward a force of all unmanned robo-drones piloted from the ground. Welcome to the…

Tech News John Mahoney

Scifi’s Reign Of Animation Is Only Just Beginning

Click to viewFor the first time ever, two animated science fiction movies will open the same day, this Friday. Of course, Star Wars: Clone Wars will smush the flies-in-space epic Fly Me To The Moon like… well, like a bug. But this animated traffic jam is still significant, because of what it signals: the rise…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Nokia’s Jeppe Web-Controlled Videoconferencing Bot Makes Meetings Even More Fun

That is, if you’re excited about the prospect of talking to a creepy joker-faced white beetle with eye holes as hollow as your soul when you’re around the conference table. The folks at the Nokia Research Center’s Smart Spaces lab are actually intending this design concept for home use, but I can see a lot…

Tech News John Mahoney

Robots Go Mano a Mano With Medieval Weapons

I’m not entirely sure what is going on here, but I know what I like—and two robots duking it out with medieval weapons is definitely on that list. There are three weapons to choose from—a scythe, ax or a mace and there is some level of human interaction via a computer terminal. To be honest,…

Tech News Sean Fallon

David Byrne’s Singing Robot Is Deliberately Creepy

If you happened to venture to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid this summer, you may have come across Julio, a robot who sings in the voice of former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne while mimicking the facial expressions of a human crooner. Byrne has chronicled the process of conceiving and…

io9 Lauren Davis

Worst Robot Penis Joke In History

Supposedly when Wall-E was already in production, the Pixar team found out that Blue Sky Studios was putting out an animated robot movie called Robots. Andrew Stanton was worried — until he saw Robots, which is nothing like Wall-E and also pretty horrendous. In this scene from the movie’s opening credits, Stanley Tucci and Dianne…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

15 Wall Climbing Robots: The Future of Voyeurism

Wall climbing robots have all kinds of potential uses, from inspecting damage on ships to catering to voyeurs and perverts with a taste for gadgetry. OObject has put together a comprehensive list of these creations including a version that climbs with static electricity and another freaky looking bot dubbed the “Ninja II”. Definitely not the…

Gadgets Sean Fallon

iRobot Gets Revenge On Former Employee By Selling His Stolen Robot Design

The story between iRobot and former employee Jameel Ahed has everything: military robots, betrayal, lies, stolen plans, lawsuits, big money, private investigators and destroyed evidence. But up until now there was one critical element missing…revenge. iRobot has completed that final act in this real-life drama by stealing back the “Negotiator” robot that Ahed made with…

Tech News Sean Fallon

Driverless Cars Conquer The Ice Caps And A Volcanic Landscape

Click to viewRobot cars are making huge leaps forward, judging from the fact that driverless vehicles are conquering two very different types of terrain. A driverless car will ferry visitors through the volcanic wasteland of Vulcania, and a robot snowmobile will race around the Antarctic, surveying regions humans can’t easily reach. Is this the beginning…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

U.S. Military To Be 30 Percent Robotic In Twelve Years

Click to viewThe U.S. military is being taken over by robots. Clearing buildings, recovering unexploded munitions and searching for bombs are some of the deadliest tasks a soldier can face in Iraq, and most of them can be done by robots. Plus, the Pentagon has plans to introduce even more robotic troops into military ranks…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

A Robot Spider That Reads Your Mind

You may find this spider robot somewhat creepy — but the good news is, the robot will know. The Hexapod robot tracks the faces of humans who interact with it, and registers their emotions. And responds accordingly. If you behave aggressively towards it, it’ll back away. Or if you stare at it for a few…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Autonomous Guardium UGV Buggy Tirelessly Patrols Danger Zones So You Don’t Have To

We already have plenty of robot sentries/killers in the sky, so Israeli defense firm G-NIUS felt it important to tip the balance a little over to the four-wheeled category (joining the DARPA Urban Challenge folks) with its Guardium UGV. Designed mostly for border patrol and recon missions, the Guardium’s onboard telemetry can receive GPS coordinates…

Privacy & Security John Mahoney

Stonehenge, The Analog and Digital Clock Robot

The Stonehenge Robot isn’t the most practical means to keep time, but it’s got charm to spare. Programmed to carefully move any of 14 double-sided cards to display the proper time, Stonehenge gets some leeway as the cards are designed to stick to the magnetic table. The only potential problem is that the robot may…

Tech News Mark Wilson

Drum-Playing Robot Doesn’t Quite Threaten the Livelihood of Real Drummers

Seeing as drum machines are pretty ubiquitous in music these days, the idea of a machine that plays the drums doesn’t sound all that groundbreaking. But what about a robot that plays the drums? Eh? Not impressed? What if I told you it played the most rudimentary beats possible? Now are you impressed? I thought…

Tech News Adam Frucci

Klaatu Varata Studios Produces Steampunk Creations With Back Stories

For those of you who enjoy steampunk, story telling and handmade creations, I present to you Klaatu Varata Studios, the workshop of Arkansas artist Dillon Chandler. Check out his Solarian Ray Gun or the Geldar Light Infantry Robot, both of which come with the back story of the Kelevion Universe and the civil war which…

Tech News Elaine Chow

Lifesize Scopedog Mecha Towers Over Iron and Steel Celebration

As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the Japan Iron and Steel Federation got ironsmithing genius Kogoro Kurata to display his insane 1:1 scale model of the Scopedog mecha from the 80s anime series VOTOMS. Weighing in at two tons and standing a full four meters tall, it dwarfed everything else at the exhibition. The…

Tech News Elaine Chow

Lego Robot Sends Pictures from Space, Wishes It Had Lasers to Annihilate Us All

Last Tuesday, a group of professors, students and robotics hobbyists launched the H.A.L.E. (High Altitude Lego Extravaganza): seven Lego Mindstorms robots attached to a weather balloon, which exploded at 30km over the Earth’s surface. Each of the robots parachuted back successfully, but not without taking the obligatory photographs of the ascent and descent: The seven…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

WowWee Femisapien Fembot Gets Thorough, Semi-Naughty Video Shakedown

As the folks at Robots Rule show in this video, Femisapien is “smart, funny, can dance up a storm and perform skits with you.” What a gal. Here we get a demo of just about every feature imaginable, including Fashion Pose mode, Backup Singer mode, Business Card Handout mode—you get the idea. All fine and…

Tech News John Mahoney

Robot with Rat Brains Learns to Avoid Obstacles; Holy Crap, a Robot with a Rat’s Brain

MechRC Looks Menacing, Heralds Cylon Invasion

First All-UAV Air Force Combat Wing Takes to the Skies Sans Pilots Over Iraq

Scifi’s Reign Of Animation Is Only Just Beginning

Nokia’s Jeppe Web-Controlled Videoconferencing Bot Makes Meetings Even More Fun

Robots Go Mano a Mano With Medieval Weapons

David Byrne’s Singing Robot Is Deliberately Creepy

Worst Robot Penis Joke In History

15 Wall Climbing Robots: The Future of Voyeurism

iRobot Gets Revenge On Former Employee By Selling His Stolen Robot Design

Driverless Cars Conquer The Ice Caps And A Volcanic Landscape

U.S. Military To Be 30 Percent Robotic In Twelve Years

A Robot Spider That Reads Your Mind

Autonomous Guardium UGV Buggy Tirelessly Patrols Danger Zones So You Don’t Have To

Stonehenge, The Analog and Digital Clock Robot

Drum-Playing Robot Doesn’t Quite Threaten the Livelihood of Real Drummers

Klaatu Varata Studios Produces Steampunk Creations With Back Stories

Lifesize Scopedog Mecha Towers Over Iron and Steel Celebration

Lego Robot Sends Pictures from Space, Wishes It Had Lasers to Annihilate Us All

WowWee Femisapien Fembot Gets Thorough, Semi-Naughty Video Shakedown

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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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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