Thursday, December 18, 2008

The Sex Life of Robots (NSFW)

I am sure that this is a sign of an apocalypse. I'm just not sure which one. Granted, it's probably not the Robot Apocalypse.

This guy, Michael Sullivan has this film project called "Sex Life of Robots", which consists primarily of stop-motion animation. Hence, the result is creepy and bizarre.

One of my favorite quotes comes from when he's explaining why he had to take the video off Youtube.

"Somebody's mom complained, you know, because they didn't want their kid watching, you know, some robot stick his dick in a horse's butt."

Indeed. The fact that you can say that as if the kid's mom were being totally unreasonable only adds to the hilarity factor. What's even stranger is that he really does consider this to a porno that no one will find arousing. He says...
"Even though nobody's going to be getting their rocks off to this, the limitations of a porno movie are, you know, still bound by that. If it turns out to be horrible it'll just oh, fade away and uh, if it turns out to be an ultra-weird film it'll, you know, be in the zeitgeist for awhile."


Well, I have some news for you, Michael. There are some very disturbed people out there. I hope you can sleep knowing that someone's probably getting their jollies to your videos right this instant. I've been a Cybernaut for many years now, and any well seasoned net-diver is inevitably exposed to a host of weird shit. I had begun to think that the list of strange fetishes that people could produce was nearing its singularity. Congratulations on adding a Stop-Motion Robot Porn to that list and dispelling me of that misguided notion.

Just in case you hadn't figured out, this video is Not Safe For Work (NSFW).



Via Wired

Friday, December 12, 2008

Robot Dog Rampages Through London!

Those cagey blokes over the pond have developed an interesting new breed of K-9. While it's true that this is more of a glorified vehicle than a robot, I post it here two simple reason.

1.)It is a ride-able dog-mech
2.)It breathes fire.

There is no part of this that is not just cool.

Enjoy.



Watch Robo Dog in Game Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

As an aside, I feel that derivatives of this work are what cowboys will ride in the future in lieu of horses. It seems to be entirely appropriate.

Via Fanboy

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Auto-Kill Zones: Not a band name.

According to The Danger-Room, Israel has set up "Auto-Kill Zone" towers along their border in Gaza. Essentially, these are towers laden with sensors and automated weapons. According to the article, a single person can oversee several of these, and essentially flip a switch once a target has been verified that will kill intruders.

I recognize the need for border security, especially in places like the Israel-Gaza border. There's just something about this situation, however that seems... I dunno. Maybe 'wrong' is the word I'm looking for?

Firstly, the idea that a people who suffered systematic genocide are so readily willing to employ automated killing machines seems somewhat ironic to me.

Secondly, I'm one of these people who's of the opinion that the 'press a button to bomb a village on the other side of the world' form that war manifests in these days leads to sociopathic tendencies.

Hey, I know that there's dirty rotten bastards out there, and our troops need the best tools at their disposal to deal with it. It's just that I'm just one of these old-school 'Thou shalt not kill" type of guys. Nevermind me. My ideals are old and antiquated.

Via The Danger Room

Friday, December 5, 2008

Meet your Robot Overlords! Introducing the Ripsaw

A couple of weeks back, a friend of mine pointed me towards Defense Tech. Right there on the first page was something that both awed and terrified me.

It all begins with a little remote control machine called the Ripsaw. I had actually heard of the Ripsaw before. It was originally designed to participate in an unmanned desert race by these twin brothers up in Maine. It turned out to be a great all-terrain vehicle. Check it out below saving a Hummer from certain doom, itself an action that I disagree with on principle, thus proving it evil.



In the back of my mind, I always knew that this little beastie would be a herald of the Robot Apocalypse. Therefore, I should not have been surprised to learn that they've put a gun on this thing!






You can find more videos of this thing on you-tube, and watch it escort it's command center around.

Where this really gets scary is when you apply some of the technologies that they're working on for UAV's to this. Apprenticeship Learning and autonomous navigation capabilities could make this critter very, very scary.

Also, their love of Heavy Metal does nothing to reassure me that they're not 'Ok' with the demise of human-kind on the basis that it's the most brutal thing they could do. Crappy Limp Bizkit soundtracks raise even more doubts.


Via Howe and Howe via Defense Tech

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Classic Robot Apocalypse: Bring in the Drones

My friend Sean just reminded me of Honeywell's Drones, and it occurred to me I should compile a list of them.

My original posting, from the mailing list...


Robot Apocalypse: Robots Help Police

Or, "How Robots will turn our democracy into a totalitarian police state"


Sean also pointed out this article, which had the following video...



And, of coarse, my favorite Honeywell Drone video...




One of the creepiest (and most fascinating) drones I've seen has an article written up at Gizmodo.




Speaking of nightmares, last night I had a dream… There was the deafening sound of a hundred thousand bees, followed by many painful stings. Or maybe it was just this thing. I can’t be sure.



Orwell would be sad to know that Big Brother is alive and well in London.








Via Gizmodo, Gizmodo, GoRobotics, Youtube

Classic Robot Apocalypse: Sarcos's Exoskeletons

Pulled from the days of the mailing list, I present to you Sarcos's Exoskeleton.



These people have obviously either:

A.) Never seen Terminator, or

B.) Seen Terminator and are blatant Skynet sympathizers.

According to Popsci.com (whose credibility I cannot totally vouch for, but only because I haven't thoroughly checked them out,) these things might be seeing limited field testing next year.

The fact that these things might be able to maneuver autonomously scares the ever loving bejezus out of me. If the Apprenticeship Learning methods that the good folks over at Stanford developed were applied to this...

Well, it makes me shudder.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Damn Robot Hippies

Robots just get scarier and scarier. These robots remind me of the Hippies out at Eeyore's birthday. Instead of industrious robot overlords, we're going to have a bunch of Robo-juicers laying around on your couch and running up your electric bill while playing the Sitar.




Combine this with the 'Robots that Lie', and humankind has just screwed itself by making the perfect Robot Deadbeat Boyfriend. According to ladder theory, we'll all be screwed. Futurama's Robot Apocalypse is looking more and more immanent.

On another note... these people are getting paid to do this?!

Via Wired

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

In the Future, Robots hunt you!

Here's the article.

It should be noted that this technology hasn't been developed yet, but it's something the good folks in the military-industrial complex are working on.

One of my favorite quotes from the article.

"What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed."

Via my IT man Gary P., Via New Scientist

Self-Assembling Nano-Machines!

This article says it all. I have nothing else to add.




Technology Review

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Thursday, October 30, 2008

I'm not terribly clear but...

I think this is the dance our robot overlords will do upon our puny human graves:


Thanks Laughing Squid. I'll never sleep again.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Wire-Free Killing Spree

It Rhymes, Yea!

So, I told my parents about this technology when they first started working on it a couple of years back. They laughed at me. My brother did too.

Well, here's a working demo, guys...




Outfitted with this sort of technology, you can say goodbye to those bulky power-sources of the past.

Of coarse, the ramifications of this sort of freedom are obvious. In a few more years, they'll be able to do this sort of thing long-range. Combine this technology with Little Dogs, and they'll be able to hunt you all day without running out of juice.


Wireless Doom, baby.



Via Gizmodo

Robot Apocalypse Mailing List

For those of you that were on the original mailing list, horrah! I think I've got it set up now so that it will come to you guys automatically now.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

HAL? Are you effing kidding me?!!

Below is a HAL suit (Hybrid Assisted Limb).

Another creepy android from Japan- via Boing Boing.
This is exactly what this sounds like. Creepy creepy creepy.

Evil android children will be attacking us on our wrinkliest front- the elderly. I think we should start a new group- People Against Leaving the Elderly at the Mercy of Robotic Evil (PALE MoRE).



I'm sorry Drew, I'm afraid I can't do that [by which I mean watch this video again] .

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

First Skynet, now Cyberdyne.

Apparently Japan, like England, isn't up on their apocalyptic sci-fi corporation names.

Thanks Japan, you gave us lots of poo porn and now robotic exoskeletons. Mass production goes into effect Friday.

Robot overlord drag or baby-steps to the apocalypse; you decide.

























Check out that hot robo-ass. There's no shame, girl! RAWR!

Via i09.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Robot Apocalypse Mailing List

When I started this blog, I promised that I'd keep up the email mailing list. Well, it seems that I've made a liar of myself, up until now. Hopefully, whenever I publish it'll distribute it to the mailing list.

Hooray?

*Edit*

Guess it's not working. No mail for you!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Classic Robot Apocalypse: Robots that Lie

This is a good one, pulled from the mailing list a couple of months back .

This is one of those articles that makes you think. You can find it here.

When I first started looking into neural networks, I became a strong proponent of emergent behavior. I remember being really intrigued by the premise of this experiment when I heard first heard about it. Then I read the article and was truly horrified. These robots had learned to lie! On their own!

Of coarse, this experiment was set up in a purely competitive environment. The real world isn't like that. If you dig deeper into the sources of the article, you'll see that they found that cooperative strategies started to evolved when they subjected the robots to forces of group selection.

This study's even more interesting than that, however. This experiment was designed to study the conditions that give rise to the evolution of communication. Here, read this. And then read this.

See how it's simultaneously deadly and intriguing? That's how your doom will be. Both interesting and doom-y.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Fashion will be your doom!

Yea. It's been slow lately. I've considered doing another classic Robot Apocalypse post. We'll see.

However, this is really neat. When I first heard about carbon nano-tubes, I became very excited. I had really hoped for a space elevator, but this application came in a close second. I'm glad to see that someone has worked it out.

Or at least, I will be until my cloths decide to kill me.

I would tell you all about this here in my blog-space, but the good folks over at Pink Tentacle have summed it all up rather nicely, and have dug up a nice little picture as well. I'll be nice and not siphon their bandwidth for my benefit.

Science Magazine via Pink Tentacle

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

On Helicoptors and Apprenticeship Learning

Why, just the other day I was talking about the guys over at Standford, documenting their contribution to the oncoming apocalypse. After reading more into it, I felt it deserved it's own separate post.

Take a look at this video, then come back.

This is absolutely amazing. They've developed an AI that essentially watches a human fly and learns from it. Think about that for a second. Let it sink in. The implications are astounding, especially when applied to other fields. Need an AI to figure out how to put a car together? Watch the human assembly line workers put it together a few times. Need to learn how to do a surgery? Watch a human do it a few times. Need to learn how to use laser sights to paint a target for an oncoming aircraft? Watch a human do it a few times.

Granted, there would be other factors to consider, such as proficient manipulation of controls and such. However, the groundwork is being laid, now, for machines that have the ability to actively learn skills by observation.

When you combine this ability with other skills being developed, such as those good folks at Dynamic Labs and their Big Dog, you get some weird things. The way I see it, the greatest feat of Big Dog is the system that identifies the problem (IE, non-flat terrain), and then comes up with a solution to the problem given the toolset it already has (Ie, four legs.) So you get something like... "Problem: Rocky Terrain. Solution: Find stable rocks to stand on. Problem: Slick Icy Terrain: Solution: Adjust stance of legs to achieve maximum stability.) Big Dog, currently, however, doesn't have the ability to pick up new skill-sets... Just the ones programed in.

Now, add this sort of programming to Big Dog. It's feasable that this sort of robot could learn to operate machinery, just by watching humans. They could learn war tactics, just by watching humans. More-over, it's difficult to imagine the skill-set not being available for download over a network. 'Dude, I know Kung Fu!' is a very real possibility for these types of machines.

Ok, I know you're all thinking... "You're over-reacting. That's all terribly complex. This thing was specifically designed to learn aerial maneuvers, not how to drive a car or do surgery."

And you're right. We're a long way from that. However, when I'm gleefully serving my robot overlords, and you're a charred skull being crushed beneath giant robot-treads, we'll see who's doomed, won't we?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Death by Land, Air, and Sea

I came into work today feeling fairly good about myself. I've got a pretty decent job. I've got a girlfriend to die for, and life's pretty good, all and all.

I was ignorant then, because I had not checked my bot sites yet.

The first thing that I saw while cruising youtube for robots was this...




No, your eyes do not deceive you. Big Dog just got scarier. Boston Dynamics calls him little dog, but he is in all actuality a little piglet of death. In my book, the smaller a robot is, the scarier it is.

They'll strap C-4 to this little sucker and have him creep up to the target. Or even worse, they could attach buzz saws to these critters and have them zergling rush your ankles.

I can imagine several of these little things being held in the cargo bay of a Big Dog. Once it's deployed, it releases several of these little buggers as scouts. If the situation merits it, it would then have the little dog self destruct, or it could come take out the target itself with it's back mounted machine-gun turrets and/or missile launchers!


But that's not all folks. They're designing robots to rain down death from above as well. Below you, you will see the Navy's answer to the predator. It's an unmanned helicopter that's capable of firing a missile at a target.



I mean, this is nothing new, conceptually. However, it's got lots of awsome, exciting music, so it must be good, right?

WRONG!

Check out this little bit that the brilliant people over at Stanford have been working on. It's both amazing and terrifying at the same time.



Yes, that helicopter you're seeing is 100% self guided. Now, combine that sort of system with the Fire Scout, and what do you get? A healthy serving of DOOOM! That's what!


This last video speaks for itself.




I will never, ever go in a swimming pool again.


Via Boston Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, H-RL, http://heli.stanford.edu/, and apparently Bot Junkie (Who seem to have posted these videos on youtube.)

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Dr. Steel on the Robot Apocalypse

Hey boys and girls!

I was introduced to Dr. Steel by my friend, Scott. I know that I speak only for myself, but this man seems to have a solid grasp on our Doom, as can be evidenced in this video.

Check it out kids!

Via Dr. Steel via Scott Patten.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Weapons of the Apocalypse: Lasers

Check this out.

According to Wired, the U.S. Military has proceeded with test firings of a mobile chemical laser. They use words like "Supernatural Accuracy", and it apparantly has both a 'Stun' and 'Lethal' setting.

I am of two opinions on this. The first is that, the less people that die in wars, the better. It could revolutionize modern war-fare.

The second is that, in the hands of our Robot Overlords, we'd be toast. But then again, we'd be toast anyway.


Via Wired

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

"Perfect Woman" is a Hoax

The "Perfect Woman" mentioned below was a hoax. On the one hand, I'm sorry that I fell for it and posted it here. On the other, I am truly thankful that such a thing does not exist yet.

First Chess... Now Rubix's Cube

Robots are already teething on Humans. They're stretching their sinister robot limbs and finding out just how much damage their hydraulic muscles can inflict. Our first casualty was inflicted at the hands of Deep Blue. Our latest has been delievered by RuBot.



Notice, the creepy-skull like head. Notice the calm, Hannible Lector-esque voice. If you look into his eyes, you can see that he obviously wants to kill the cute, nervous kid standing by him, and the kid knows it. You can almost smell the fear.

Now that you've seen the enemy, watch him handily defeat our best and brightest warriors.



In all seriousness, problem solving robots scare the ever living bejezus out of me.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Zombie Robots


Rats and robots are nothing new. Those of you that are veterans of the mailing list may remember Steve posting about rats controlling robots.

It seems they've taken this a step further. They no longer need the rat. Just the rat brain. Researches pulled a similar stunt with moths early last year.

I, however, find this much more disturbing. It's a huge leap to go from insect to mammal. It raises the possibility that the first sentient machine may be manufactured from human brains! More specifically, your brains!

Via BBC News

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I-Robot Plans to Attach Deadly Spinning Blade to Autonomous Robot

Ok, am I only only person that thinks robot lawnmowers are a truly terrible idea? According to Gorobotics.net, that's exactly what the Roomba's creators are doing.

The 84 page filing has several potential designs for robotic lawnmowers listed - electric, gasoline, Roomba-like, different cutting systems, navigation systems, etc.

(emphasis mine)


I am convinced that I-Robot is gleefully plotting our demise.

Via Gorobotics.net

Monday, August 11, 2008

Classic Robot Apocalypse: Be Afraid

Here's the first jaunt through the archives of the mailing list. For those of you that are here for the first time, I must warn you: What you are about to see may change your life forever.

Our first specimen is big dog. It's supposedly being developed for use as a robotic pack mule. I contend that they're going to place machine gun turrets on it's back and rig it up with heat sensors and motion detectors, and send them out on seek and destroy missions. Target? You...

Observe.




The next in our lineup is a robot snake. This is another sweet little DARPA project.



If your mind doesn't reel at the nefarious possibilities, it's a sure sign that your skull will be among the first of those crushed by robotic tank treads in Terminator 4.



Did you see that? No, not Batman vs. The Terminator. The crushed skull. Yea, the one that could be yours. You're so entirely doomed.

Clarification

It's been brought to my attention that there may be some clarification needed about this blog.

Nothing here is supposed to be cute, although some things may be amazing. All technology on this blog has the potential to kill you. Much of it has the potential to kill you in your sleep. Some of it can even hunt you down as you flee screaming through the woods, and then kill you. As far as I know, this blog covers technology that actually exists. I apologize in advance for any hoaxes I get sucked into.

And no, I'm not joking. Anyone who knows me knows that I am 100% serious, all of the time. This stuff is no laughing matter. You are doomed, and it is my job to keep you up at night worrying about the horrible manner in which you will die.

Coming Soon: Robot Apocalypse's most terrifying technological advances.

Single men will be the death of us all.

There's not much to say about it after you've watched the video. However, I am somewhat amazed by the tone of the report.




To learn more, hit the link.

Via Botjunkie.


*Update* I'm not entirely sure that this isn't a hoax.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

And so it begins...

I've been talking about doing this for months now. So I did it. I'll be mirroring my mailing list here.

So brace yourselves, kids. It'll only get worse from here.