Mr. Future

Bot Junkie has a few minutes of the Disney / Thinkways Toys folks showing off the upcoming Ultimate WALL -E robot. It’s really kind of brilliant, having a toy robot that imitates a robot, making it a very natural match for motion and expression of the original character. The footage is a little dark, grainy, and exactly the sort of thing I could watch all day.

Link

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Ultimate Wall-E, a dreamy little $189 toy robot will be on the market this around-about the June launch of the robo-tactular Disney/Pixar Wall-E movie.

He’ll have 10 motors, an infra-red remote for programming movement and behaviors, and be equipped with a nice sensor compliment including sound, obstacle, and touch detection.

There will also be a number of smaller Wall-E toys, including the iDance Wall-E mp3 speaker toy. These toys and more will debut at the Bay Area Maker Fair in just a few days. Initiate lunch-money-saving-protocol 43.

Update!: A few new details via MakeZine.com:

“An innovative touch programming system lets kids direct WALL·E simply
by making patterns on the remote’s touch pad. With voice activation and
a follow-me mode, WALL·E can follow the sound of a human voice and
detect someone entering a room.”

“The Ultimate WALL·E is also MP3 compatible and features built-in speakers. USB cables and rechargeable batteries are included.”

Link (via Gearlog)

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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)

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From the makers of the forthcoming Wall-E sanitation robot, Buy n Large Robotics promises to bring us Sall-E the vaccubot, Gar-E the yardbot (fully automated yard solution), Nanc-E the Nannybot (every aspect of your child’s health and happiness has been addressed) and Wend-E the (washing, drying, folding) washbot.

What could make for better eye-candy than personal robots as rendered by Pixar?

They’ve put together a fun shiny (marketing) site for next summer’s CGI robot movie, Wall-E. News tidbits from the site include Buy n Large plans for offering multi-tiered police service, the Buy n Large Xanadou Shopping Euphoria Pill, the “Ms. Nancy” line of teaching robots, and the “BnL Artificial Mate.”

Teaser trailers for Wall-E are here and here.

As for the robots, well, please put me down for one of each.

Link (via notcot.org and FilmSchoolRejects)

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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:

And a high-res version is available here.

Link (via Alphadrome)

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