Awesome Robots

Pro bowler Chris Barnes takes on EARL (Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher) capable of rolling an identical shot nearly every time. But its precision is its downfall. The score stands: humans 1, robots 0.

Autonomos Labs have developed a car that can be ordered to drive itself and pick up a passenger. The car has a complimentary iPad app that uses GPS to inform the car of the passenger’s location.

His kids don’t know what to make of it, but this man has made the costume to end all costumes. His motorized Artoo emits bleeps and lights up, and even has internal fans to cool the occupant.

Syfy’s awesomely bad Sharktopus hits the cable and satellite waves in less than a week (on 9/25), and we’re stoked. Here’s the new sneak preview of Roger Corman’s latest masterpiece.

We’re baffled by the half-naked dudes in this short film from Russia, but we’re duly impressed by the computer-generated Transformers animations, built with 3DS Max, Boujou and After Effects.

While Vecna’s BEAR robot is supposed to save lives, it looks like he’s spending most of his time getting pumped up to destroy us all. Let’s hope Skynet never comes online.

Currently being developed by the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, the Snakebot is a highly limber – and highly creepy – robot designed to traverse tight spaces and varying terrain.

This isn’t the first we’ve seen of Japan’s giant Gundam statue, but this timelapse HD video really showcases the sheer awesomeness of the 59-foot tall mecha currently on display in Shizuoka.

Hector Lopez‘ illustration combines three of our favorite things, sharks, giant dinosaurs, and robots. This thing needs to be made real, or at least turned into a movie on the SyFy channel.

It might take this Android-powered LEGO robot over 38 minutes to solve a giant 7x7x7 Rubik’s cube, but it’s still way faster than most of us could do it – unless we just rearranged the stickers.

Don’t worry if you missed the life-size Gundam statue in Tokyo. It’s now in Shizuoka; you have until March 2011 to kiss, hug and attempt to take home this epic statue and his beam saber.

Frankly we always thought that certain sculpted body parts on the Terminator were a tad skimpy, so we’re enjoying this tee that pays homage to Sir-Mix-A-Lot and his fondness for big, er, bots.

Jamie Martin created this conceptual 3D animation of his Cybernetic Remote Autonomous Barricade (or C.R.A.B., for short) robot. We definitely wouldn’t want to run into this thing in a dark alley.

Nikola Nikolov’s 6′ tall, 198 lb welded and sculpted Transformer sculpture is the embodiment of the relationship between man and machine, being crafted from his first car, a Lada Samara Diva.

This amazing robotic chess set took a core team of four people over a year to create, using over 100,000 LEGO parts, at a cost of appx. $30,000. Winner: the LEGO company.

Kaktus Film’s Mega Robot animation is only 24 seconds long, but the incredible photorealism in this short clip gives us new-found appreciation for CGI artists. Kaktus, feature-length flicks, please!

If they saw you coming down the road in this 1700 lb drivable arachnid, people would probably get out of your way. It doesn’t look that comfortable, but what do you want from a giant mechanical spider?

Developed by the University of Southern California, the LittleDog is just like its big brother, capable of walking over difficult terrain and obstacles both by design and by learning and adapting.

Bidi-bidi-bidi beats here in this fun music video from Eclectic Method, featuring some of our favorite robots, including R2-D2 and C-3PO, Twiki, Johnny 5, WALL-E and EVE, Teddy and B9.

What do old people fear more than anything? Illness? Nursing homes? Incontinence? No, silly. Robots. Join Sam Waterson in this SNL classic clip offering the best protection against robot attack.

Created by Tony DeRose and his two sons for the upcoming Maker Faire, Saphira is an 8-foot tall metal, mechanical, fire-breathing beast. Now, that’s some dragon breath. (Jump to 2:50 for fire!)

In the machine that can print buildings, layers of sand are bound together to create a marble-like material, in effect turning it back into solid stone. The process includes internal curves and ducting.

Designed to protect troops from IEDs, Rafael’s tiny (7″ x 7″) Pincher robot can drive into danger and neutralize it by firing miniature rockets which burn their targets while limiting collateral damage.