Awesome Robots

German grade school teacher Lars Reimers decided to teach his students Kraftwerk’s 1978 technopop classic Die Roboter (The Robots), and had them perform it in the best possible way – dressed in cardboard robot costumes they made themselves.

After a tragic accident, Jason Barnes had his hand and wrist amputated. As if that weren’t challenging enough, Jason plays the drums. But thanks to Gil Weinberg, and the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, he can play entirely new styles with his new robotic hand.

We love the whimsical homage artist Derek Sullivan has paid to the most notorious robots in pop culture history in his 18″ x 24″ print. It’s easy to spot Wall-E, Bender and Rosie, but how many more can you identify?

Makerarm is a robotic arm with a variety of tool heads that allow it to 3D print (both filament and resin) write, draw, cut, carve, pick & place and more. You can also teach it new actions, control it over Wi-Fi and make multiple units work together.

SUPINFOCOM students Valentin Watrigant, François Guery, Elsa Lamy, Aurelien Fernandez, and Louis Ventre created this inventive animated short as their graduation film. We love the late ’50s “space age” aesthetic that permeates the character and sound design.

Jockeying for the title of “Coolest Dad of the Year,” builder Izzy Swan took his drill-powered walking machine and turned it into a 10 foot-tall T.Rex for his son. Its legs, mouth, and tail move. We think it should be named “Mechasaurus Rex,” but it’s simply known as “Bob.”

BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman and his studio Harebrained Schemes – the developer behind the recent Shadowrun games – are bringing back the mech franchise as a turn-based game for Windows, Mac and Linux. They should put MegaBot and Kuratas in here.

We’re always amazed by the strange and wonderful contraptions used in factories to automate laborious tasks. Here, a crafty robotic assembly line picks and sorts salami sticks, grabbing the loose meat sticks and neatly placing them into trays for packaging.

Roboticist Dr. Guero has created an AI-driven humanoid which can not only dance solo, it can waltz with a partner. He’s previously taught it to ride a bicycle, walk on a rocky beach, drag heavy objects, and walk just like us.

Episode VII is just around the corner, so let the Star Wars merchandising blitz begin. One of the first official toys to break cover is a doozie – a special version of the Sphero app-controlled robot that’s been made to look and work just like the rolling BB-8 droid.

A mining robot runs into its counterpart from a rival company. Will they work together to make their jobs easier? Or will they behave like their human masters? Find out in Jack Anderson’s neat short film.

ABB Robotics shows off its Integrated Dispensing Function Package, a robotic system which can squirt out adhesives, sealants and other gel-type substances in precise patterns, and at much faster speeds than other systems.

Spin, drift and flip out with Sphero’s edgier R/C robot, the Darkside Ollie. It rolls at speeds up to 14 mph with a range of 100 feet, and you can trick out your fun with two sets of tires, hubs, and LED colors. See how it moves here.

An upcoming virtual reality game for Windows and the Oculus Rift. It’s not as pretty as fellow mech fps Hawken, but it appears to be extremely immersive.  You play as a mech pilot taking on mining and mercenary missions.

The Beach Bot is a unique robot created by Disney Research and students from ETH Zürich. Its single purpose is to draw huge images in the sand. Here, it pays tribute to the man who made everything at Disney possible in the first place.

Tesla showed off a prototype of a new type of charger that uses snake-like appendage to automatically reach out towards a vehicle, and plug itself into the car’s charging port. Just add a few more arms, and you’ve got Doc Ock.

Here we go. Suidobashi Heavy Industry has accepted MegaBots‘ challenge for a mech duel. And they want melee combat. Leaders of the world, let’s have peace and prosperity so we’ll all live to see giant robots punching each other.

In case you needed further proof that we live in awesome times, American mech maker MegaBots just challenged its Japanese counterpart Suidobashi Industries to a freakin’ (friendly) robot battle in 2016. LET THEM FIGHT.

…blew out his flip-flop. Isn’t that the way Margaritaville goes? Well, either way, that’s what happened to this NAO humanoid robot when it took a wrong step, further proving that we have a long way to go before Terminator could happen.

In this short film, man perfected androids, but the two races got in a war of extinction. One man is determined to not let himself be the last of his kind. A graduation film by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg students.

While the DARPA Robotics Challenge is a showcase for cutting-edge tech, not everything always goes according to plan. Here’s a comical reel from IEEE Spectrum of some of this year’s entrants in their more humbling moments.

Industrial robot maker Yaskawa shows off the incredible precision of its MOTOMAN-MH24 by having it learn blade skills from a samurai sword master. The part where it slices the pea pod in half is nuts. Fortunately, it can’t chase us – yet.

Researchers already figured out how to make a robot that could run like a cheetah. Now scientists at MIT have made their own version that can run untethered and jump over obstacles up to 18-inches-tall. Yes, folks, we’re doomed.