Mr. Future

Three Transformers fans from Nanjing sculpted, welded and bolted this colossal 1300 lb. close cousin of Bumblebee in Jiangsu, China.
Dubbed “X2,” the “life-sized” hand-sculpted resin, metal, and glass robot sculpture took 3 months to create, and cost more than $8,000.

“Every time we saw X2, we felt like he was full of life…and you felt that at any moment he’d start moving.”

The trio plans on building more.

Link (via Little Red Blog)

“Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.”
- Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

As part of their excellent coverage of the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik, The New York Times is also running an article on the influence of the Space Age on pop culture.

The article runs the whole gamut, from Sci-Fi movies to Googie architecture, but my favorite part of the pop-culture sidebar is the inclusion of this goofy musical tribute to Sputnik clip.

Link - NYT: “When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed”

Link - NYT: “With Fear and Wonder in Its Wake, Sputnik Lifted Us Into the Future”

Link - NASA: “Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age”

(via Paleo-Future)

Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems (Animatronics and Movie Robotics) has built a fantastic webcam/spider robot, the i.c. Hexapod.

Based on an robot they designed for a Harry Potter film, the i.c. Hexapod tracks faces, reacts to your presence, and if you hold his gaze long enough, he’ll upload your picture to his gallery website. (Anyone know the location?)

Micromagic Systems sells hexapod kits, and some custom animatronic server add-ons as well.

Link - to check out more hexapods in the “Robotics” section.
(via Robots Dreams)

Australian artist Ashley Wood, beloved for breathing new life into Tank Girl, is producing a limited edition wooden robot (Bertie?) drawn from his brilliantly named “Zombies vs Robots” 2-issue mini-series comic.

They’re a little grittier than the Take-G wooden robots from earlier this summer, but who could possibly say no to a tiny wooden robot with a bazooka?

Link to more photos. (via NotCot)

From a discussion on Alphadrome:

“Short Lived” is a great video short about a collector’s toy robot that’s been called home.
It was written, shot, programmed, and directed by John Galloway and Mark Wainwright as a final project for their Masters in Digital Effects at the Bournemouth University in the UK.

While it’s made some waves in the 3D animation community, it hasn’t yet seen nearly the love it deserves on-line yet. Everyone who’s seen a “Deedar” wants a Deedar.

Here’s a streaming youtube version of the video:

Link (via Alphadrome)

From IDMind:

“The Robotarium is a structure of metal and glass, in which a set of totally autonomous robots will start “to live”, divided in different species and with different characteristics and capabilities.” It looks likes the population consists of a great variety of light-seeking photovores.

The Robotariaum’s Inventor / Artist Leonel Moura describes it as “the first zoo for artificial life.” He looks at robots very much in the way as we are used to looking at natural life. ” We, humans, enjoy watching and studying other life forms behavior and, sadly, also to capture them. However, in this case, although the robots are confined to a cage it can be said that, not like animals, they enjoy it.”

Link (via Robots.net)

Update:

Mr. Moura has posted some excellent video of the Robotarium!