Four years after the Aibo puppy was discontinued , some CAT scans and X-rays have emerged showing two of the models’ inner parts. The CT scans don’t appear to show any abnormalities, but then I’m no doctor. Or roboticist. More

Twitter’s good for a lot of non-passive-aggressive activities, like controlling Lego Mindstorm robots. This time it’s not a HTC Hero pulling the shots though—it’s one of those ultra-hackable Nokia N900 phones. More

DARPA wants to let you all know that its plans for the robot apocalypse are still going strong. The agency’s got IBM working on the brains , has an RFI out on the skin , and is handling propulsion and motor control in-house. Next up? Eyeballs.

Buried in a site devoted to early robots is my dream man, Electron. Russian, born in 1967, he has 4ft-wide shoulders, waltzes, plays chess, and while he only understands 112 commands, his steely gaze is reassuringly paternal. [ CyberneticZoo via BotJunkie ]

He may have plastic boobs saggier than Dame Judi Dench, but as Wired points out , this RoboThespian “shows more acting range than some Hollywood stars.” The British robot has been programmed to show off a variety of acting abilities. His creators, Engineered Arts , have made him completely self-supporting, with his torso capable of bending and turning, his arms able to move about, and even basic facial gestures performed. He is powered by compressed air, with the control system sitting in his torso along with the air valves that help him move. The best bit however is that he can be fully-programmed to perform a script on cue, translating text to speech in English, Spanish, Germany, French and even Mandarin Chinese.

Roomba has ruled the roost when it comes to domestic chores for a long time — too long. It’s getting some serious competition from Samsung , which is finally going to unleash one of its robovacs onto the rest of the world. Well, to Europe anyway. The Navibot is set to spread its wings across the EU in March, having been apparently warmly received in limited Italian tests last year. The bot captures 30fps video of your abode, documenting your feng shui and charting the most efficient course around your coffee table and the display case that houses your TMNT collection.

Not content in just making a drink-pouring robot, the guys at Evil Mad Scientist wanted to make a drink- mixing robot. You know, so they can charge more. But to build one, they had to find the right pump. And the best one for their use, interestingly enough, is a breast pump. If there’s one consumer group that I can expect to be more picky than me when it comes to food safety it’s new mothers, so these pumps— designed to move food grade fluids without contamination— aren’t actually a crazy thing to consider.

Remember Frosty the Fire-Breathing Snowman ? This is Sparky the Snow-Melting Dragon. He was built by Nick and Anna—the folks who made Frosty—and he’s helping them deal with a snow-filled driveway. Note that I don’t know what these fire-breathing beasts’ real names are, but I think Frosty and Sparky seem fitting. [ Thanks, Nick and Anna! ]

Wired recently reported that the UK Home Office is preparing a national fleet of unmanned aircraft, but the surveillance-loving island nation has had a keen interest in drones for quite a while. Now, Merseyside police (who’ve had a drone of their own for about six months) are bragging about their first ever catch with the new toy. When coppers heard that a suspected car thief was hiding in the bushes, they wasted no time launching their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with on-board thermal imaging — which led them to the sixteen year old. In addition to the (alleged) perp, a twenty year old man was arrested in connection with the crime — but his apprehension was done without aid of the UAV and, as such, not nearly as bad-ass.

We’ve seen all manner of phones controlling robots, cars and helicopters, but a HTC Hero operating a Lego Mindstorms robot? Awesome. It works via a purpose-built app which uses the Hero’s accelerometer, connecting to the ‘bot over Wi-Fi. It’s from the creative minds at Swedish tech company ENEA, who created the app to harness the Hero’s accelerometer to control the Mindstorms bot. Normally such a relationship between a controller and robot would be over Bluetooth, but ENEA was forced to use Wi-Fi due to the “limited Bluetooth support in Android OS version 1.5 (not supporting the Bluetooth serial port profile, SPP)”. It’s not the best quality, but do check out the video below for a glimpse at the Hero getting all domineering on a little LEGO creature