So, do you remember waking up this morning and promising yourself that you were going to conquer that fear of creepy animatronic babies? You do?! Well that’s great, because today is definitely not the day to commit yourself to something like that. Especially not as long as special effects guru Chris Clarke has his latest creation running amok in this world.

You see, Clarke has been in the movie magic game for quite sometime. Most recently, he’s the man responsible for creating faux horse puppets used in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse film. So what’s he up to building evil and soulless robot babies? Oh, that’s easy: an evil and soulless soap opera needed an animatronic baby for filming. Of course…

Video after the jump:

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This cake looks delicious.

Shai Revzen and his team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Modlab have built a remote-controlled robot that can build other robots using modular parts and insulating spray foam. The foam is used to connect modules and create appendages, with the added benefit that it’s much lighter and cheaper than building the entire robot out of electromechanical modules. Also, it’s super creepy, which is something we’ve come to expect out of all these soulless killing machines.

Robots tend to be designed with a specific task in mind, and their parts are built accordingly. However, there are many missions where this approach doesn’t work. In cases such as disaster recovery, intelligence gathering and space exploration, it isn’t always clear what task a robot might be assigned. [WIRED]

The Foambot builds task-specific robots like quadrupeds or snakebots, and it can also be used to pick up hazardous items or create an emergency doorstop for when you absolutely, positively have to keep the door at McDonalds open and you don’t care how long it takes the fry girl to peel off the insulation later. The team says they could eventually add collapsible molds to the robot so it can form specific pieces out of foam like wheels, oars or impellers for water travel, gliders, etc. I hope it can make me some new pants, ’cause I crapped ‘em after watching the videos below. There’s also one video at the end of something that this Foambot reminds me of (and, no, it’s not the ending of Ghostbusters).

[Sources: WIRED, Gizmag, IEEE, NextBigFuture]

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…and introducing, Sex Lobster!

“The last place you’d want to be is cooped up with a dozen Norwegian guys.” Now I realize that sounds like the opening dialogue to a Scandinavian porno, but it’s actually one of the first lines from the latest red band trailer for The Thing. After that, all of the spoken words to follow are pretty much “Ahhhhhhhhhh” and “Noooooooo“, but I suppose it’s the context that truly counts. What’s most shocking about this latest trailer is actually how much footage we get to see of The Thing’s appearance. Shape shifting, tentacle stabbing, identity stealing and ice block smashing: this trailer has it all. Looks to be heavily dipped in the CGI sprinkles factory, but I’m still holding out hope. Even if this new prequel only packs 30% of the punch that the original did, that’s still a whole lot more worth watching than I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Man, I will never forgive myself for that one. It shall forever remain my barometer, bro.

Red band trailer after the jump:

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We have an update to those rumors about the presence of Rodents of Unusual Size in New York City. One of these rats was just speared by Housing Authority employee Jose Rivera at the Marcy Houses project in the fire swamp Bed-Stuy. It appeared to be well-fed and measured almost three feet long from nose to the tip of its evil, evil tail.

Animal experts who viewed the picture [below] identified the animal as a Gambian pouched rat, which is a fairly common pet rat. They’re nocturnal, can grow to three feet and four pounds or more, and live seven or eight years. Imports have been banned since 2003, when they were blamed for a monkeypox outbreak that sickened 100 people in the United States. [NYDailyNews via TheDailyWhat]

On the upside, Gambian pouch rats are mostly blind and can be trained to sniff out landmines (AKA “HeroRATS“) and diagnose tuberculosis by smell, so they aren’t pure evil (they just look it). Also, the Gambian pouched rat is a different genus than the Norway rat species in New York City, so at least the two can’t interbreed to create a horde of huge, filthy sewer rats.

We have a couple pictures of this, both after the jump since there’s a dead animal in them and some people have a problem with dead animal pictures even when the animal is a creepy, enormous cave rat holy crap kill it with fire.

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For anyone curious enough about the learning curriculum over at Osaka University, look no further than this image post here, to see what they’re all about. Basically, the only thing that their big brains ever work on are terrifying robot babies and I’m afraid to say that it looks like the night terrors won’t be ending anytime soon. In their most recent attempt to drill a nightmare into your head, Osaka University will soon be unveiling two, that’s right two, godforsaken musculoskeletal infant robots, at this year’s ICRA.

The smaller of the two infants is Pneuborn-7II, built to replicate the size of a 7 month old, while its larger sibling, Pneuborn-13, is the size of an average 13 month old. And like the Bible’s Cain and Abel, the two robot infants knew there could be only one. Though similar in construction, the bots were built for two separate functions, to study motor development and the other, skeletal development while learning to walk. Both are scheduled to learn how to break into apartments sometime next week.

…Pneuborn-7II was built to study the relationship between motor development and embodiment. It is 80cm (31″) tall, weighs 5.4kg (11.9 lbs), and has 26 degrees of freedom actuated by 19 pneumatic muscles. Notably, the robot’s spine has three pitch and yaw joints that allow it to rotate, flex, and extend. It is fully autonomous, containing a micro controller, battery, air valves, and an air source (compressed C02 cartridge bottle). [PlasticPals]

More terrifying photos with upset children after the jump:

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Did you read our post earlier about the creepy telepresence spermbot and think, “If only it were small enough to hold in my hand and/or orifices and also I’m not completely insane”?  Yeah.  Nobody thought that, but yet it exists.  Uh, thanks?

Hiroshi Ishiguro, the Japanese roboticist who made the aforementioned spermbot and built a replica of himself called Geminoid HI-1, has shrunk down his spermbot nobody asked for into a convenient handheld size.  Great.  Just great.  It mimics the facial expression and body language of a person speaking on webcam, which is far more useful than just Skyping them.

A press release from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International says, “The mobile phone may feel like the person you are talking to.”  Yeah, it may.  Or it may feel like you’re holding something from a Lovecraft story.  I’ve never had a conversation with a stump-armed albino who’s less than a foot tall and has legs conjoined into a point and thought that was normal.  Oh, I’ve done it; don’t get me wrong.  But I’m not going to pretend it’s normal.  Sorry, Gary, but you’re a weird dude.

[Banner picture via cool new site TheMarySue]