Mr. Future

A timeless story of a boy and his robot, it watches like a Godzilla movie crossed with the 60’s television version of Batman. Great campy fun. A man in a giant robot costume slugs it out with rubbery monsters while stomping all over a scale model of Tokyo. A 12 year old boy joins a secret organization of world defending spies, foiling alien overlord plots and villainous beatnik henchmen. What is not to love?

In this week’s episode, Giant Robot takes on one of the goofiest looking alien robots in sci-fi history, Nucleon, the “Magic Globe”. Enjoy.

Okay, it’s not exactly a robot, but I really like the idea of a portable electronic means of salvation. Besides having an iPhone.

The Rosario Elettronico faithfully recites the appropriate mysteries of the rosary for each day of the week, (please, please, please let it be in a robotic voice) and comes in a headphone-only or loudspeaker version.

For robots of other faiths, there is of course the mantra-matic Shilpa Chanting Device and Tibetan Digital Buddhist ‘Jukebox’.

Link to the translated order page (via BoingBoing Gadgets)

Note: The Electronic Rosary is also customizable with an optional Padre Pio action sticker!

A brilliant (Brilliant!) project developed by Demitrios Kargotis and the Royal College of Art, is almost certainly the first soft-serve dispenser with artificial intelligence.

“Employing voice stress analysis of the user’s answers to specific
questions, varying degrees of unhappiness are measured and the
counteractive quantity of ice cream is dispensed: The more unhappy you
are, the more ice cream you need.”

Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

Secret Fun Blog points us to a great collection of Tex Avery’s “… of Tomorrow” cartoons

While some of the humor is a little dated, the gizmo-centric picture of tomorrow, presented in glorious mid-century optimism is evergreen.

The House of Tomorrow (1949)

The Car of Tomorrow (1951), T.V. of Tomorrow (1953), and Farm of Tomorrow (1954) are here, below the fold.

Link ( to Secret Fun Blog’s collection.)

Read more

If you’ve been working on building your own hysterical robot, we’ve found the comedy venue of your dreams. Japanese entertainment conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo is sponsoring a star-making funny robot competition in Tokyo this fall.Baca Robo (”Foolish Robot”) 2007 takes place this November 4th at the “Lumine the Yoshimoto” theater, with a cash prize of 500,000 yen ($4265.00!).

They’re accepting entries through October 5th, and robots that make it through the qualifying round will have 2 minutes to make the audience laugh. Judges for the competition include Mayway Denki president Nobumichi Tosa, writer/director Shinji Higuchi, and professor Masahiko Inami. According to the official rules, qualifying robots must be autonomous, under 7 feet tall, make people laugh, and must do so without the use of explosives, sparks, fire, or liquids.

As the old robot joke (as told by robots) goes:

“Waiter! Waiter! What’s this robot doing in my soup?”

“It looks like he’s performing human tasks twice as well, because he knows no fear or pain.”

<Ba-dum Bump!>

We can only assume this extends to comedy.

Translated Link (via PinkTentacle)

Re-animating the long-forgotten corpses of ShowBiz Pizza / Chuck E Cheese animatronic characters, who have truly sinned, programmer ChrisThrash shows us a brief glimpse of the afterlife that awaits wayward machines.

Chris’ brilliant Dante-esque series of youTube videos not only take us through the ironic punishments of Robot Hell, but also provides a humble look into the work that goes into the programming of the doomed.

(Warning: Video Content may violate Asimov’s First Law.)

Just a Friday Quickie:

Here, without fanfare, is the hit music video “The Humans Are Dead,” From HBO’s “The Flight of the Conchords.”

Be sure to watch the credits for the noteworthy binary solo.