Robots

Why We’ll Eventually Want Our Robots to Deceive Us

As robots and AI start to play an increasing role in our lives, the question of how we want them to behave gets more pressing with each passing breakthrough. In the new book, Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence, robo-ethicists Will Bridewell and Alistair M. C. Isaac make the surprising case for…

Tech News George Dvorsky

You Can Amass Your Own Army of Tiny, Robotic Stormtroopers

When you’ve got enough money to build a moon-sized, planet-destroying space station, you can clone an army of millions of soldiers using the loose change you find in a sofa. For those of us who aren’t quite as well funded, UBTECH Robotics has thrown some Stormtrooper armor on one of its 16-inch tall humanoid robots…

io9 Andrew Liszewski

A Farmer and His Robot Make the Ultimate Odd Couple in Charming Scifi Short Brian and Charles

Scifi comedy short Brian and Charles unfolds on an isolated farm in England, where a desperately lonely man builds a robot companion for himself—and soon finds that his new relationship, even though it’s with an artificial human who looks like elderly men but acts like a child, is nothing but work. Jim Archer’s winning mockumentary…

Movies Cheryl Eddy

Robots Made From DNA Could One Day Transport Medicine Inside Your Body

In the classic 1966 American science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, a submarine crew was miniaturized and injected into a body to fix a blood clot in the brain. That’s obviously not how future medical science is going to work, but the notion of creating microscopic machines to perform complex tasks is certainly on point. A…

Health George Dvorsky

This Is the R2-D2 Robot Toy I’ve Dreamed About Since I Was a Kid

Like millions of other kids around the world, after seeing the original trilogy, R2-D2 instantly became my favorite Star Wars character. He seemed like the perfect sidekick, but the real Artoo was from a galaxy far, far away from mine, and the toy versions of the little droid were always lifeless clones of the character…

Gadgets Andrew Liszewski

The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Robot Vacuums Is This New Feature

Long gone are the days when robot vacuums would simply bump their way around your home while they randomly cleaned. But even with upgraded smarts and better sensors, modern robovacs can still wander into places you don’t want them, so Neato is introducing a potentially brilliant new feature letting you limit the travels of its…

Gadgets Andrew Liszewski

Lego’s New Robotics Set Made Me Fall in Love With Lego All Over Again

There’s nothing unique about loving Lego. Millions of people wax nostalgic when they see those colorful bricks. Millions more never stopped building. I’ve always been a bit in between. I like zoning out by putting stuff together so, every couple of years, I’ll buy a Lego set and build it. But then what? Put it…

Other Gadgets Adam Clark Estes

The Only Job Humanoid Robots Are Good at Is Making Hilarious GIFs

Boston Dynamics’ founder, Marc Raibert, recently gave a TED Talk where he trotted out some of the company’s recent innovations. The talk mostly features robot tricks we’ve seen before, except for a brilliant outtake of ATLAS trying to help out in a cafeteria that probably serves as the most accurate look at what life with…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

A Very Cool Take on the First Appearance of Batman, And More of the Best Toys of the Week

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9’s weekly recap of the most delightful toys we’ve seen on the web. This week, a Grand Moff Tarkin figure that could give the Rogue One recreation a run for its money, some very cool (and very weird) robot monkeys, and even more Bat-mania with a slick new ride for…

io9 James Whitbrook and Andrew Liszewski

Glowing Eyes Don’t Save the New Teddy Ruxpin From Being a Boring Clone of the ’80s Hit

By today’s standards theoriginal Teddy Ruxpin, essentially a stuffed toy bear wrapped around a cassette player, borders on archaic, but in 1985 few toys incorporated any kind of technology, and the bear felt as futuristic to a seven-year-old version of me as the original iPhone did a decade ago. It was one of the first…

Other Gadgets Andrew Liszewski

Could This Squishy Robot Be the Future of Robotics?

The phones in our pockets might be getting more and more complicated, but many researchers advancing the field of robotics are actually engineering simpler bots designed to reliably perform very basic tasks. So instead of one day facing a terrifying future filled with terminators, these squishy rolling donuts might be our biggest threat. Yoichi Masuda…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

Watch ATLAS the Robot Autonomously Fall Off a Stage

ATLAS is an incredible machine. There’s no way around that. First unveiled in 2013, the humanoid robot can now walk around autonomously, move boxes around, and implicitly threaten to destroy humanity. This level of sophistication is exactly why it’s so damn funny when ATLAS fucks up. Boston Dynamics, the company that builds this incredible robot,…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes

An Old-School Voltron Set Is Officially Coming to Lego

A little over a year after len_d69’s custom Lego Voltron set was submitted to the Lego Ideas platform, the toymaker has officially decided to put it into production after the fantastic model of the five transforming robots from the original animated series successfully received 10,000 votes of support from fans. https://gizmodo.com/lego-would-break-the-internet-if-it-made-this-voltron-s-1772526744 It always feels corny…

io9 Andrew Liszewski

Incredible Self-Folding Robots Work Without Batteries or Wires

Inspired by the traditional Japanese art of origami, self-folding robots can go places and do things traditional robots cannot. A major drawback to these devices, however, has been the need to equip them with batteries or wires. Researchers from Harvard have found a new way to overcome this problem, by designing folding robots that can…

Tech News George Dvorsky

Stanford Designed the Most Phallic Robot You’ve Ever Seen

Designing simpler spacecraft is what helped us finally put rovers on Mars and start exploring the Red Planet. Embracing simplicity might also give us simple, inexpensive robots that thrive doing very specific tasks, instead of multi-million dollar humanoids that have trouble just staying on their feet. Stanford University and University of California researchers are the…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

This Printer Doodles Stick Figure Robots to Explore Areas We Can’t

Building a robot that can replicate everything a human can do is both impossibly complicated and expensive. So, researchers at the IT University of Copenhagen are taking the exact opposite approach: building incredibly simple robots, on-demand, that only do what humans can’t. In a paper recently published to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters journal,…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

This Floating Robotic Camera Is the Cutest Thing Ever Sent Into Space

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have a new crew member—an adorable robotic ball capable of recording video while moving in zero gravity. Dubbed “Int-Ball,” the device will free astronauts to do more important work, while providing ground controllers with their own set of eyes. Int-Ball is short for Internal Ball Camera, and it was…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

The Aliens Paul Reiser Figure You’ve Been Waiting For, and the Rest of the Awesome Toys We Saw This Week

Welcome back to another week of Toy Aisle, io9’s collection of the most amazing Paul Reiser merchandise (and maybe other things) we’ve seen on the internet this week. We’ve got Black Panther and the Ultimate Spider-Man himself swinging into action, even more SDCC exclusives, and a very fancy Transformer. Lego San Diego Comic-Con Exclusive Brick…

io9 James Whitbrook and Andrew Liszewski

This Real Life Iron Man Is Only a Superhero on Laundry Day

Those blockbuster Marvel movies only show our favorite superheroes when they’re out saving the world. If you want a glimpse of what heroes like Iron Man do the rest of the time, look no further than this incredibly articulated humanoid robot called TEO, who’s recently learned to iron clothing. TEO’s been in development at the…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski

This is What an ISIS Drone Workshop Looks Like

The Islamic State has increasingly used drones and other robotic IEDs against American, Iraqi, and civilian targets in Iraq. And as the Coalition fights its way through Mosul, troops are discovering workshops filled with crude but deadly robotics used to bomb people sometimes dozens of times per day. Getty Images just published photos of an…

Tech News Matt Novak

Why We’ll Eventually Want Our Robots to Deceive Us

You Can Amass Your Own Army of Tiny, Robotic Stormtroopers

A Farmer and His Robot Make the Ultimate Odd Couple in Charming Scifi Short Brian and Charles

Robots Made From DNA Could One Day Transport Medicine Inside Your Body

This Is the R2-D2 Robot Toy I’ve Dreamed About Since I Was a Kid

The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Robot Vacuums Is This New Feature

Lego’s New Robotics Set Made Me Fall in Love With Lego All Over Again

The Only Job Humanoid Robots Are Good at Is Making Hilarious GIFs

A Very Cool Take on the First Appearance of Batman, And More of the Best Toys of the Week

Glowing Eyes Don’t Save the New Teddy Ruxpin From Being a Boring Clone of the ’80s Hit

Could This Squishy Robot Be the Future of Robotics?

Watch ATLAS the Robot Autonomously Fall Off a Stage

An Old-School Voltron Set Is Officially Coming to Lego

Incredible Self-Folding Robots Work Without Batteries or Wires

Stanford Designed the Most Phallic Robot You’ve Ever Seen

This Printer Doodles Stick Figure Robots to Explore Areas We Can’t

This Floating Robotic Camera Is the Cutest Thing Ever Sent Into Space

The Aliens Paul Reiser Figure You’ve Been Waiting For, and the Rest of the Awesome Toys We Saw This Week

This Real Life Iron Man Is Only a Superhero on Laundry Day

This is What an ISIS Drone Workshop Looks Like

Getting Stuck Inside a Glitching Robotaxi Is a Whole New Thing to Be Scared of

Artemis 2 Live Updates: Humanity’s Epic Return to the Moon 🔴

NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission Blasts Off

Disney’s Robot Olaf Dying Is the Funniest Thing to Happen in 2026

Kia’s EV3 Is Headed to the US This Year With Up to 320 Miles of Range

This Is the Way to Lego’s April Releases

Group Pushing Age Verification Requirements for AI Turns Out to Be Sneakily Backed by OpenAI

Amazon Facilities in Bahrain Hit Again as Iran Follows Through on Threat, Report Says

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