Manoi: Cosplayer robot

One of the fun things about having a kit robot is you get to take lots of silly photos of it. And dress it up.

I had too much fun at Dark Carnival bookstore in Berkeley posing Kyosho's Manoi in the owners' doggie clothes. Actually they did the dressing up, not me -- Jack and Jay were laughing but their dog was not amused. Here's Manoi in Polar Expedition and Shriner versions.

DIY footballers wow the masses

R/C robots are evolving. Fast. I was struck by the progress at the Kondo Cup soccer tournament held in Akihabara recently. Kondo makes DIY robot kits, and once you equip your bot with a remote control, you can build your own soccer team. Some assembly is required for these little humanoids, as I wrote about in a recent Wired News article, but once you're done you can have fun fielding them in sports events or customizing their appearance. The Kondo Cup action, on video over at Lem Fugitt's comprehensive Robots Dreams website, is comparable to humanoid soccer in the RoboCup tournament, but faster since the players don't have to think for themselves. It's amazing to see how quickly a mainstream fan base is evolving along with the robots. The kids at the show were enthralled, and many were very skilled at controlling the plastic footballers.

On another note, Loving the Machine has been selected as one of the top ten science books of 2006 by Amazon.com!