Thursday, April 23, 2009

Beware the Penguins of the Apocalypse

As any of my comrades can tell you, I like penguins. Who doesn't like penguins? They're adorable! They're like tiny torpedoes! But I've found that I will never be able to trust a penguin again. Especially a penguin with glowing blue eyes.


Behold your new masters, meat-bags.




I know they're cute, but they will be deadly. This is the fault of some people that my Seattle friends likely know. Some engineering types over at the University of Washington have figured out how to make robot fish school.




Now, apply this to the penguins, and you have trouble. Oh, and by the way, great. Now I'm afraid of flying penguins! Thanks, ass-hats.


News of your aquatic doom has been brought to you by courtesy of New Scientist.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under DOOOOOOOOM!

Oh man! I've totally been slacking. I forget to check out my robot-news for a month, and robot doom reaches out with its squishy tentacles to take me by surprise! This just goes to show that the Robot Apocalypse will always take you unawares, even if you are expecting it!

My first bits of terror were delivered by the good (if blissfully unaware) folks over at Bot Junkie. There was an article over there a few weeks back concerning the theory behind the development of squishy-robots.

The video below explains it all, and it does it in a short and sweet way.



As it turns out, MIT is already ahead of the game. This is usually par for the coarse, as far as I'm concerned. Botjunkie claims that MIT came out with this squishy-robo-snail way back in 03'.



A very visceral shudder passed through my being as I pondered the nightmares they've developed since then. Unfortunately, I kept reading, Bot Junkie then informed me that Boston Dynamics (home of the Big Dog, and also home of the people who take my worst concerns and make them visible,) have begun to set their nefarious minds to further the realization of their dark cthuloid robot masters. And to boot? They're using the same MIT guys that made the snail-bot.

Oooh, so doomed.


And while I'm mentioning Boston Dynamics and content brought to my attention by Bot-Junkie, I thought that I'd bring you further proof that you won't be safe at the beach. If robot-squid don't devour you, Big Dog will get you.




To make myself feel better, I headed on over to Wired where I was enlightened with the news that the Navy has awarded contracts for FEL Lasers. Until 2005, I was convinced that this was just science fiction.

Can't wait till they mount these on a twenty-story tall version of Big Dog. We'll call it... Mega-Dog. He'll fry you with his FEL Laser, and then crush your burning skull with his hoof.

Via Bot Junkie and The Danger Room

Monday, April 13, 2009

More Murderous Lawnmowers

I'm becoming more and more convinced that lawnmowers are going to be the foot soldiers of the Robot Apocalypse.


The newest front of Robo-mowers is this.

Students are now controlling robot Lawnmowers with Wii-motes.

There's nothing more that I can add to that, really.

Via Yahoo