It's a fair-sized sculpture, the only one of its kind, about a foot and a half tall. It seems to be constructed from recycled materials, which gives it a nice weathered look. It also costs $500, which is okay for a unique sculpture but as much as a pretty decent full-sized stereo, so it's probably more for the art crowd than the omg cool robot! crowd. [Etsy via Coolest Gadgets]

Basically, PR2 has been programmed such that when you teach it how to perform an action—such as pouring a beverage out of a can and into a cup—it will then be able to repeat that action regardless of the size and relative position of the objects involved. This is a huge step forward in robotics development, since it saves you the trouble of having to program, in the poured beverage example, every permutation of can and cup size. The robot learns on its own how to deal with each unique situation. Situations like, say, two parts whiskey, splash of soda. Hop to it, PR2! [Willow Garage via Bot Junkie]

So far, the development of this hummingbird has cost $2.1 million and that number's growing. Japanese researchers are hoping to make the robot hover at a point in mid-air—just like the bird which inspired it—as they control it using infrared sensors. Once they manage that and add a tiny camera, they imagine that the robot will "be used to help rescue people trapped in destroyed buildings, search for criminals or even operate as a probe vehicle on Mars."

A space-exploring, human-saving, crime-stopping robot bird? Brilliant. [PhysOrg via Engadget]

Remo (short for Remote Brain (shouldn't it be Remob? Or RemBra?)) is actual a robot kit that's impressively advanced, even considering its $4,350 price. Its custom CPU talks to a PC over Bluetooth (hence the name) and gives dual color CCD cameras as well as pressure sensors in the feet for better balance. [RobotsSFX via PlasticPals via Botropolis]

Not a lot of details are available on the little guy's performance, other than that it seems to be number four in a series and that it got a surprising 9.6 from the Russian judge. [Robot Dreams via Bot Junkie]

"Aiko can recognise faces and says hello to anyone she has met."

OK. Sounds good enough.

"She helps me pick what to have for dinner and knows what drinks I like."

Hmmhmm.

"Like a real female she will react to being touched in certain ways."

Right.

"If you grab or squeeze too hard she will try to slap you."

Correct.

"She has all senses except for smell."

Fine. That can be convenient at times.

"[Walking] is the most difficult thing for any inventor to do. The problem is finding a way for Aiko to walk that looks human-like without impacting on any of her other abilities. I have spent the last six months taking her apart and trying out lots of different systems, but I haven't been able to get it right yet."

Ooooooook. So she doesn't walk and you can take her apart to rebuild her.

"But Aiko is always helpful and never complains. She is the perfect woman to have around at Christmas."

Come on, Le, you had me until you said that. That's not very realistic. But then again, whatever rocks your world, dude. If you are happy, Aiko is happy, and we are all happy. Just don't have another heart attack while working on her, like you had two years ago.

I wish the New Year brings you both happiness and no tight white jackets. [Daily Mail]

Some of the shots look like they're close, but all I can think about is how fucked we are when the Terminator thing goes down and all we have are sparklers. Videos like this make me think the liberal middle class (me) should think again about the NRA and shotguns. [Pasqualy]

[Wired]

Voelker, a German designer, says the robot is still in the prototype phase, but from the look of things it already has the Christmas tree and house routines down pat.

The prevailing "lightdrawing" technique for humans—waving a LED key chain around in the air like a madman—is not the easiest to master; at best you get a nice halo over your head, at worst you get a big ugly mess of light. But Voelker's Lightdrawer putters along, cool as a cucumber:

Robot Drawing with Light from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

Using a robot might not be the most fun way to paint a long exposure Christmas tree, but at least this way people will be able to tell it's a Christmas tree when you show them the picture. [Nils Voelker via Designboom]

Seriously, if anyone has a detailed explanation for this thing, please shoot me an email. [Pravda]

Update: Thanks to all those who sent in the explanation for this strange metal fellow. Sergey G's details, in particular, were very helpful:

TIS (Transinvestservice) is logistics company near Odessa. They had problems people finding their warehouse (you know - knowing to turn left after 15 km and stuff like that), so TIS set up an giant robot made from old cars as a signpost.

As a side-note: "Giant Human Like Battle Robots" is a popular meme in Russia and Ukraine. "When [are we] going to employ Giant Humanlike Battle Robots to protect our borders?" was a winning question for Putin on his nationwide interview with Internet folk. Yuschenko (Ukrainian president) was asked this as well since then.

Built by someone from the CKBot group at UPenn's Modlab, this terrifying little device hides in the ceiling above a cubicle. When activated, it pops up a ceiling tile and unleashes a hot fury of ping pong balls down on the unsuspecting victim. It is, in a word, amazing. [Modlab via BotJunkie]

Perhaps what makes these illustrations work is that they trust their young audience with difficult questions: Are our brains simply computers? Are our bodies mere machines? What is work, without agency? What is pleasure, without feeling? These are not things I was thinking about in 1989.

Or, you know, it could be the fact that they're utterly stunning, and look like something you'd find in an art gallery, not a rotting children's book. More at [AJourneyAroundMySkull via BoingBoing]

There was the immobile singing Poo-chi by Tiger Electronics, a company that also made the i-Cybie, which could lift its leg and roll over. The $99 Fisher-Price Rocket the Wonder Dog, which was operated via infrared headset, could burp and scratch itself. There was also Tekno by Manley Toy Quest, Big Scratch and Lil' Scratch by Trendmasters, Puppy Magic by Toy Biz and more.

Many people who had both real dogs and fake dogs decided to see what would happen when the two worlds collided.

If I had a fake dog... you know, the idea seems so preposterous to me that I can't even go there. My real dog is looking at me as I sit here on my shiny computer which is flanked by my shiny iPod and phone. "Aren't you glad I don't require electricity to operate?" he is saying with his eyes. "Don't you want to take me to the park and escape the backlit cyber world you are immersed in so many hours a day?" Why yes, Amos, I do. Now stop dragging your butt.

If these cyber versions were meant to appeal to real wannabe dog owners, I think they should've made them look a little more doglike. Would it have been so hard to slap some fake fur on these things? I'm thinking they could've gone with some Muppet fur—shaggy blue, maybe. Or Elmo red. Who wants a pet that looks like Robocop. Also: my real dog earns his keep by licking clean the dinner plates and jumping in the laps of cute guys at the park. The cyber curs had no such uses. If I'm going to shell out that kind of money for a non-breathing pet, I'd at least like if it could second as a vacuum.

Nevertheless, many robotic dog owners thought it'd be very original and clever and hilarious to introduce their real pet to their fake pet, as evidenced by the following videos...

German Shepherd doesn't let Aibo touch its meat

Sparky gets in some hot two-on-one action with a Doberman and a Chihuahua

Dog asks the Poo-Chi why it isn't wearing any clothes

A cat watches an impertinent iCybie take a pee

This particular school of cinema reached its nadir with robo-dog snuff films

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

This is Yotaro, the Japanese baby simulator. It looks like a big stuffed animal bear with a baby's face projected on to it. It's actually got a lot of complex stuff going on inside it, for better or worse. I just wonder why they didn't make it look more like a real baby if they were going for simulation. [Yotaro via DesignBoom]

Okay, so maybe the technology's not at superhero levels quite yet. The Muscle Suit—created at the Kobayashi Lab at the Tokyo University of Science—is a "wearable robot" that comes in two versions: one that augments the muscles in your lower back, which is great for workers who have to repeatedly lift heavy objects, and one for your upper body that allows you to lift about 110 pounds without any effort from your arm muscles. It's a similar concept to the HAL-5 robot suit, except lighter and geared toward specific tasks. If only that specific task were clobberin' baddies. The best part is that a practical version is expected to be available sometime early next year. [CrunchGear, Network World]

Currently, Robovie is designed to help the elderly complete their shopping rounds. At home, users enter their list into a special mobile device that Robovie senses upon entering the store. Robovie then greets the user and guides him/her through the store helping them find, carry and remember items from their list.

I can't tell you how many times I have wished that supermarkets had some sort of robot or GPS system that would guide me to wherever the hell they keep their pizza sauce and burrito shells. And carrying my groceries for me—well that's just a bonus. The whole thing might be even better if the larger carts were equipped with some sort of system like this, instead of a free-standing robot. I would love it even more if it scanned and weighed my purchases and allowed me to swipe a card instead of standing in line at the checkout. [Robot Watch via Pink Tentacle via PopSci]

Kokoro, the company which brought us those HRP-4C female androids back in 2005, will make these Actroids for Sogo & Seibu. Customers can record audio so the robots not only look like them but also sound like them, and "she also does the best work as a guide with her out-standing eye-catch effect!" Careful you don't fall for her eye-catch effect too hard, now. [Sankei News via PlasticPals and CrunchGear]