This story is extremely hilarious, loud giggling may occur, you have been warned..

Jason Striegel wrote a story about how he was mistakenly added to a celebrity and a sex-chatbot list. Jason quickly finds that he has a hard time convincing people of his human origins, thus failing the Turing test himself..

How I failed the Turing test | BlogCadre

Eh-Wire writes “Roborior, a house-sitting robot armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone is on sale in select Japanese department stores. The house-sitting robot can detect break-ins with it’s infrared sensors and then call the owners cell phone and stream video to the tiny screen. At $2600 each the Roborior is not cheap. For those that require something a little more substantial, Tmusk, the manufacturer of Roborior, has produced a four legged version called Banryu. This one is the size of a large dog and sells for around $18,000. It’s not supposed to shed hair or sleep on the furniture which could make it quite popular.”

Slashdot | House-Sitting Robot Hits Store Shelves in Japan

ScentCone writes “A University of Tokyo team has developed a flexible, laminated network of pressure and temperature sensors suitable for jobs such as robot fingers. Circuits as pressure sensors, and semiconductors as temperature sensors are not new, but the thin, networked laminate of the two is novel.”

Slashdot | Japanese Researchers Develop Sensor Skin

Pretty cool video clips of a robotic hand grabbing balls shot directly towards it.

shpoffo writes “Engineers at the University of Tokyo in Japan have created a robot that can catch a ball moving faster than 186 miles per hour (300 kph) - more than 270 feet per second. It uses an array of photodetectors to directly control the three finger actuators - which can rotate 180 degrees in 0.1 seconds. It’s only catching softballs at the moment, but operators are optimistic for it to soon catch other objects and grasp moving things. A video with odd sci-fi TV-series (coral cache) accents is available.”

Slashdot | Robot Catches High Speed Objects

We knew it would eventually happen, someone at Realdoll called the guys at robo-lab!! Heck! In a few years I’ll buy a couple myself!

“An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes,” - Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University, Japan.

jolyon writes “The BBC is reporting that Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a “female” android called Repliee Q1. ‘She’ has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe. She can only sit though at present, so we’re a long way from Blade Runner yet.”

* Slashdot | Japanese Develop ‘Female’ Android