Creepy Robot Afternoon

Creepy robots all night long. These are some robots that inspire a mixture of fear, fascination, and "awwww, cute!". A couple of different designs here, each of them similar only in their relative size. They're both about two feet tall, but were built for completely different purposes. The Omnibot (the one with the glowing blue eyes), is a home watch-bot that wanders around this dude's house all day looking at stuff. The DONO is a specially designed beggerbot. It is designed to work in public spaces soliciting donations.

This first one is a homebrew bot built from an old Tomy Omnibot. If you weren't around in the 80s, good for you, it was a terrible time. Lots of people were attempting to make things that they called robots or what-have-you. Instead we ended up with stuff that ended up being a hacked together hunks of plastic that were as infuriating as they were disappointing. DJ Sures is a crazy hacker weirdo, and I use the term with more affection than you can even begin to understand. He took apart one of these twenty year old robots and rebuilt it from the inside, making it stronger by adding servos to the arms, making it smarter by loading in all kinds of programming he swiped from his other 'bot projects, adding a camera to give it vision, a microphone for voice response capability and it has an ultrasonic sensor for navigation. It can see and hear better than your new puppy.

In this video the Omnibot++ watches some TV for a little while and then seems to just... get bored... and wander away of his on volition. This video is particulary cool because it gives you a look from the 'bot's POV.

[via RetroThing]

Next we have a begger bot. Dubbed the DONA by designer Min Su Kim, this dimunitive 'droid is designed to do a task usually taken by volunteers. It solicits donations. There aren't many details of the the specifics on how this thing works, but it seems to respond well to the people. It looks down whenever someone throws in a donation and blinks cutely. Is it just me or is this some kind of robotic cross between Red Riding Hood and a shyguy?

[via Yanko Design]