Robot Uprising

Our robotic overlords have their quirks--the way their heads explode when Captain Kirk confuses their logic, the fact that they've enslaved all mankind to work in their outer space diamond mines, etc.--but it's all forgotten when the robots rock out.

So we're happy that Gibson is releasing a robotic, self tuning guitar. It will be available December 7, and will allow for single touch "standard" tuning as well as allowing for six common altered tunings.

In honor of robots rocking out, TheFeed is proud to present our incomplete list of robots who rock out. It's under the jump. Feel free to add any we forgot in our comment section.

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According to The Astrophysicists Journal, evil scientists at Berkley have discovered a new, habitable planet.

Enslavement is imminent.

The fifth planet orbiting the sunlike star 55 Cancri is 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer. It's 46 times the size of earth and is in the sweet spot temperature-wise: Water on the planet is liquid and that means potential life.

"This discovery of the first ever quintuple planetary system has me jumping out of my socks," says group member and veteran planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley. "We now know that our sun and its family of planets is not unusual."

Except that our planet is home to baseball and Jesus. 55 Cancri is home to the Wargnaut Empire, a battle-hardened race of gigantic invisible cockroaches determined to crack our skulls and eat our dreams.

An eleventh hour attempt at an alliance with our robotic overlords has as yet been unsuccessful.

Nice going, Science.

Scientific American: Record Fifth Planet Discovered Around Distant Star

Australia's national science agency CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is developing a jacket-like garment that can charge electronic gadgets on the go.

The idea is that the jacket will convert energy generated by human movement and action and use it to charge a cell phone or iPod.

Basically, it turns the wearer into a battery. Wait a minute, where have we heard that before?

THE MATRIX!

Someone call the CIA, Australia is trying to enslave mankind and make one really good movie followed by two terrible sequels!

ArsTechnica: Australian powered jacket can charge your iPod, cell phone while you move

Robots put the "fun" in "functional"! iRobot's Create Challenge offered up a prize for a user-created robot to help around the house.

"The winning entry, titled 'Personal Home Robot,' was designed to make life around the house more convenient and entertaining. It can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take medication. The robot’s creator, Danh Trinh, 35, of Towson, Md., won $5,000."

 Reports PHR destroying all humans in its path are currently unconfirmed.

Good job, Danh Trinh... you just doomed humanity.

Engadget: iRobot announces winner of Create Challenge contest

Those devious robots are at it again. Using scientists under their influence at Chonnam National University, our future robotic overlords have commissioned the development of a heart-cleaning robot.

The microscopic bot crab walks through the heart and releases medicine directly onto blockages. It is powered by the sugars in the patient's own blood and will begin testing soon.

So, the plan is to heal the hearts of the masses and then take them over from the inside. Nice try, robots. We'll be eating big, juicy burgers all the way to the grave!

Gizmodo: Scientists Develop Artery Scurrying Micro Robot

Back in 1999 a movie was released that mostly flew under the radar. Only appreciated in small circles of nerds, it didn't really find mass-market appeal, but was a chilling look into a possible future of the world.

The movie was The Matrix and although you've probably never seen it, it involved the human race being enslaved in a virtual reality version of real life while being harvested for energy like batteries.

Japanese scientists have just achieved the first step toward the eventual enslavement of mankind. They have created a system where a player can control an avatar in Second Life purely by the power of thought.

Get used to Second Life, after we're all rigged up to the robotic mainframe it will be the only life we know.

Currently, our future looks bleak as we would only be able to control the avatar's walking, but researchers hope to be able to eventually allow for complicated gestures and as much functionality as possible. Ideally to help disabled people control the "game".

PinkTentacle.com: Brain-computer interface for Second Life

In a piece of incredibly disturbing news, David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher in the Netherlands has predicted a future in which humans marry robots.

Levy wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners.

Never mind the affront to the insitutuion of marriage, and that every wedding wil feature Mr. Roboto by Styx, there's also the fact that robots are our ENEMIES.

So less like marriage and more like humans being forced to mine diamonds in space for our robotic overlords.

Breitbart: Researcher: Humans will wed robots

The system of checks & balances of our government means that the Senate can spend most of the time debating and voting on things that the President will just veto.

Then the President gets to go watch cartoons. He likes Metalocalypse.

For example, in the gaint domestic programs budget is expected to get a veto. Right in the face.

However, it does show support for NASA and the desire to give them more money so they can waste it on space things.

Yahoo News: Senate votes to add $1B to NASA budget

The Japanese sure do love their robots, but where are the jumping robots? The University of Tokyo has you covered!

They have created a robot with air-powered legs can jump almost 2 feet into the air from a stand-still.

Look out! The robot oppressors can now attack from the skies.

Engadget: Air-driven robotic legs hop, skip and jump

Microsoft recently closed FASA Studios, which created MechWarrior 4 and Shadowrun. However, they have given a mod team permission to use assets and property from the BattleTech universe.

This is awesome, because usually mod teams get shut down by property owners who don't want independent developers using the licensed content.

The mod is called MechWarrior: Living Legends and is currently planned for release as a mod for Crysis.

Kudos to Microsoft for letting a team of fans utilize assets that they aren't going to.

ShackNews: MechWarrior Crysis Mod Given Legal Clearance

Remember in Splinter Cell when Sam Fisher fires sticky cameras from his gun and they do things like explode and gas enemies.

Well, DARPA wants to make that a reality (but probably not with explosives and poison).

The cameras are being developed by CDM Optics and are so tough they can survive drops from high-altitude aircraft or being fired from a shotgun.

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Bad news, soldiers. The evil robots have developed a way to disguise themselves with human-like faces. Trust no one!

This technology from Tokyo University can dynamically change its shape with 56 degrees of freedom. Even worse... a real human face can be projected onto it (video of that after the cut).

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Coming just a few days after researchers claim that RFID implants pose a serious risk of cancer, VeriChip is going on record saying that their implants are completely safe.

If you were rushing out to get an evil implant that identifies you by radio frequency, you might want to hold off. VeriChip, however, wants to reaffirm that their implant is "cleared by the FDA as a Class II Medical Device."

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In the future, your house will know where you are at all times. Yeah we don't like the sound of that either.

Gregory Abowd, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, is working on a computer program that can track your movements within your home by following the electronic noise made in your power grid by your use of light switches and small appliances. Up until now, concepts for smart homes had to include cameras or micorphones to track your movements, both of which have draw backs. Abowd's program can plug directly into a wall socket and determin which room of the house you're in by finding where particular appliaces are in use, while ignoring power draining items that are generally left on, like ceiling fans.

I for one, welcome our future robot overlords, and promise not to leave the bathroom light on anymore. Check out the full article.

South Korean researchers have just unknowingly enabled the coming robot uprising. They have developed a microscopic robot that is powered by heart muscle cells.

The itsy-bitsy E-shaped robot is powered by "growing heart muscle tissue from a rat onto tiny robotic skeletons made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)," which moves its legs by "relaxing and contracting of heart muscle cells."

They see the robot crawling through clogged arteries to clean them, but TheFeed knows better. One day all of humanity will wake up with robots in their hearts and murder on their minds.

Engadget: Heart muscle tissue powers new body roaming robots