Panasonic’s IFA press event is just underway, and you know what that means: a whole bunch of TVs. 3D TVs, to be exact, and Panasonic has teamed with James Cameron’s flagship 3D feature Avatar to push those wares. Best sign of this blossoming friendship? A few tons of movie prop guarding the Panasonic booth entrance. Hide your pristine wildlife and mystical native forms of understanding, people!

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Anthropomimetic robots. It’s not something that rolls off the tongue, but the ECCEROBOT is just such a robot, and it’s really a sight to behold. Developed by a consortium of European robotics labs, the motivation behind the creation is to more accurately copy human internal structure, using thermoplastic polymer for bones, screwdriver motors and shock cord for muscle, and kiteline for tendons. The results are impressive, if not a bit creepy. According to IEEE Spectrum, scientists hope in the future to use ECCEROBOT’s human-like form to “explore human-like cognitive features,” which may or may not include starring opposite Christian Bale in science fiction films. See for yourself in the video after the break.

Google has been saying for a while now that its Android operating system — currently limited to mobile phones, including T-Mobile’s myTouch launching today — isn’t just for mobile phones. The bigger vision is to see Android on netbooks and even other devices around the home. Now we’re starting to see that vision become a reality, and it’s becoming clear that this will provide huge new opportunities for developers, too.

The New York Times reported in April that T-Mobile plans to sell a home phone and a tablet computer early next year, both running Android. Now, microprocessor company MIPS says it is moving forward with plans to help design Android-based set-top boxes, digital TVs, mobile internet devices, and home media players. In an interview with the Times, MIPS vice president of marketing Art Swift described Android as a “great platform” for connecting home electronics to the internet. The first non-phone Android devices could ship as early as this year, he said, starting with digital picture frames.

While device announcements from minor players started to gain traction at this year’s computer expo Computex in Taiwan, VentureBeat has learned that both Google and T-Mobile support the migration of Android applications to this type of devices.

At a T-Mobile and Google press event a few weeks ago we asked Android head Andy Rubin whether the Android Marketplace, like Android itself, would be making the leap from mobile phones. He responded:

The way we have built Android, with the Android Marketplace we are agnostic to the physical infrastructure of the products running the apps. When we talk about cell phones, set-top boxes, netbooks, refrigerators, car navigation systems, laptops, desktops and all the products out there, each of these products is a a little bit different in some aspects. Fundamentally what we are doing here is that we are trying to connect them all. And make them all eligible to run the same applications. And we think that we provide the technology that enables that.

There’s still a lot hard work to do. We need that Marketplace to recognize that an app on a refrigerator is different to the one on a cell phone. That’s why the app on the refrigerator needs to have different aspects which differentiate from the cell phone one. That’s why the different devices need to have different profiles. And I think we have done a good job at defining the profile for a cell phone. Going forward we will enable profiles for other meaningful products which will touch people’s lives.

It looks like ZMP, a Tokyo-based robotics company that’s graced the (figurative) pages of Engadget from time to time, has just introduced a Linux-based RoboCar for testing autonomous auto technologies. Which only makes sense, we suppose — better to test all of those autonomous algorithms you’ve been crankin’ out on a six pound model before moving up to a three thousand pound family sedan (if a lot less fun). This guy is 17-inches long and packs an AMD Geode LX800 processor, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, stereo CCD cameras, eight IR sensors, three accelerometers, a gyroscope, and a laser range finder under the hood. Prices start at $7,000, but you have to jump on this — according to Linux Devices, only two hundred units will be sold this year. Peep the video after the break.

It’s important to keep your guests properly hydrated at a party, but it’s hard to not feel awfully demeaned while wandering around with a cocktail tray. Since hiring servants is so passe, the solution is Table Robot from Laskmi-Do Corp, a two-wheeled, self-balancing bot that features a particularly unsteady looking design. It’s tall and slender, balancing a tabletop on two scrawny little wheels, a feat it showed off at last week’s FOOMA Japan, Tokyo’s biggest gathering for foodies and related geeks. The natural comparison is to a Segway, but this is a full-fledged robot, capable of cruising around under remote control and, soon, following you around by voice, meaning a fresh and precisely balanced mohito may soon be just a word away. Click on through for the video.

Robots may be impressive and occasionally frightening things that will some day rule our lives and societies, but right now they’re rather co-dependent, unable to even recharge themselves without a helping hand. The latest from robo-startup Willow Garage is different, a bot called PR2 that’s capable of maneuvering through a crowded office, opening (non-locked) doors, and pilfering a little taste of that good, good, alternating current juice. What’s more, he’s sensitive to your time constraints, so the demonstration video below has been thoughtfully edited to minimize footage of aimless wandering, spinning, and general confusion. Next step: learning to knock.

Looks like the RoBe:Do gang, who recently blew our minds (well, filled our tummies) with their Twitteriffic Popcorn Poppin’ Bot, are back on the scene with another one of those modular robot chassis designed for those of you looking to get into the robot game with nothing more than a spare netbook, some serious programming chops, and a few hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket. The newest creature, named “Three,” features a simplified design, faster motors, and a larger base for those six-plus-pound laptops of yours. Just dig into the supplied high level software libraries and code yourself a robot! And if you’re feeling frisky, check out the various options — including infrared sensor and webcam. Order now and it’s yours for $399, or hold off until July 1st and pay the full $439. Peep the gallery below for a closer look.

If you’re squeamish about eating sushi then we doubt this is going to help. Chef Robot, on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo, is really just FANUC’s M-430iAsanitary food and pharmaceutical robot with a fleshy appendage — guess the rest of the human is right there on the serving tray. Soylent Green is people!

Concept art shows a human resistance fighter facing off against a Hydrobot from the movie “Terminator Salvation.” Warner Bros.

The United States military sees robots as tireless warriors capable of striking fear into enemies, and is not shy about finding inspiration from “Terminator.”

Real Soldiers Love Their Robot Brethren

By Jeremy Hsu

Human warriors have long spoken of the bonds forged in combat and of becoming a “band of brothers.” The fact that some of those fellow soldiers are made of metal has not discouraged human feelings toward them.

Thousands of robots now fight with humans on modern battlefields that resemble scenes from science fiction movies such as “Terminator Salvation.” But the real world poses a more complex situation than humans versus robots, and has added new twists to the psychology of war.

“One of the psychologically interesting things is that these systems aren’t designed to promote intimacy, and yet we’re seeing these bonds being built with them,” said Peter Singer, a leading defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century” (Penguin Press HC, 2009).

Singer highlights many accounts of human soldiers feeling strong affection for their robots — especially on the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams where Packbots and Talon robots undertake the risk of disabling improvised explosives planted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One EOD soldier brought in a robot for repairs with tears in his eyes and asked the repair shop if it could put “Scooby-Doo” back together. Despite being assured that he would get a new robot, the soldier remained inconsolable. He only wanted Scooby-Doo.

Robot in arms

The United States military sees robots as tireless warriors capable of striking fear into enemies, and is not shy about finding inspiration from “Terminator.”

“One scientist said he was trying to build the Hunter-Killer drone from ‘Terminator,’” Singer told LiveScience.

Terror aside, Singer and other experts point out how battlefield robots have also proved capable of inspiring love from their human comrades, such as the EOD soldier.

“It sounds silly, but you have to remember that he’s been through the most psychologically searing experience: battle,” Singer said. “That machine has saved him time and time again.”

Sometimes such bonds led soldiers to risk their lives for their robots, in a strange inverse of the idea that robots would spare human lives. Singer recounted another EOD soldier who ran 164 feet under machine gun fire to retrieve a robot that had been knocked out of action. And several teams have given their robots promotions, Purple Heart awards for being wounded in combat, and even a military funeral.

This attachment to robots stems in part from the human brain’s mirror-neuron system, which fires up whenever watching the movement of someone or something, Singer noted. The system helps form the foundation for empathy and understanding the mindset of another being, but can also lead people to project personalities and emotions onto objects.

Eyes in the sky

The growing numbers of battlefield robots have also changed the human relationship to war itself, especially as the United States has already fielded more than 12,000 ground robots and more than 7,000 flying drones in regions such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Armed drones in particular have proved effective in loitering over target areas for hours until targets come in sight, and then firing their missiles at suspected insurgents — all while being controlled by human operators sitting thousands of miles away in Nevada.

The drone operator’s war often looks surreal and disconnected from reality, given that they coordinate strikes via online chat and view their targets as small infrared figures moving around. Many media stories have referenced the example of a 19-year-old drone operator, who honed his skills from playing Xbox to become a top operator and eventually an instructor.

That has led some members of the U.S. military to look down on drone operators for not sharing the risks of ground forces or even pilots, as Singer discovered. One Special Operations officer remained enraged years later by a “bogus weather call” that prevented a drone from supporting his unit in Afghanistan. His contempt for the Predator operators was such that he expressed more respect for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – the insurgent mastermind who was behind hundreds of bombings and killings.

Still, Singer said that the operators “know lives are at stake,” and take pride in the role that they play in helping demoralize the enemy. And the U.S. military has clearly invested much of its future in the capabilities of robots.

When Singer asked one U.S. Air Force officer about how he envisioned the psychological impact of the drones on the enemy, the officer compared the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants to the human resistance fighters in the “Terminator” movies — hiding in their bunkers and caves from the technological onslaught.

How to fight a robot

The ever-watchful eyes in the sky have clearly unnerved human fighters to some extent. The New York Times reported in March that some Pakistani locals had given up drinking Lipton tea for fear of the teabags acting as homing beacons for drones. And the Los Angeles Times noted that a six-month campaign of Predator strikes has sown distrust within Al Qaeda, so that the militants have begun violently purging their own ranks.

However, Singer and others point out that the use of robots may also make the United States look weak, even cowardly to cultures in the Middle East and elsewhere. People of those cultures see a powerful nation that wages distant war with incredible technologies but refuses to risk its own troops, and they grow defiant.

“One side thinks that its very duty is to do everything to bring its soldiers home to its families,” Singer noted. “For the other side, the very act of dying is almost the main goal.”

Singer spoke with two insurgents for his book, and they acknowledged the technological prowess of U.S. robots and drones. But they also said they were not at all intimidated — one with an engineering background expressed eagerness to get his hands on his own robot.

Previous attempts to rely solely on technological shock and awe through “Gunboat Diplomacy” and airpower have not proven incredibly successful in the long run, said Douglas Peifer, a researcher at the Air War College of Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

“No doubt robots and unmanned combat systems will discourage our opponents and minimize our losses,” Peifer said in an article for Small Wars Journal. “But betting that the latest iteration of revolutionary technology will magically compel a resolute enemy to come to terms is unwise.”

On the modern battlefield, Iraqi insurgents have adapted by targeting EOD robots and capturing robots for their own use. U.S. soldiers have even encountered crude but innovative insurgent bots, Singer explained in his book — such as a remote-controlled skateboard rigged with explosives that scooted along as though pushed by the wind.

Guess who has the terminators

“We don’t have to be in the year 2018 with Skynet and the terminators all around us, for those huge policy and military dilemmas to take form,” Singer said. “They’re already here.”

As the U.S. military and others rapidly deploy a growing swarm of robots on sea, land and air, some experts cited in “Wired for War” could not help but make another “Terminator” comparison. They warned that the United States runs the risk of looking like the evil empire from Star Wars, if not the heartless Skynet and its army of relentless terminator robots.

Still, robot researchers and the military continue to embrace ideas born from “Terminator” and science fiction. Singer attended one presentation on the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) — a long-range robot that refuels itself on “grass, broken wood, furniture, dead bodies,” according to a list reeled off by one scientist.

We are so fucked.

I am completely and utterly convinced that if the human race isn’t finished off by armageddon, the rapture, enviromental devastation, Miley Cyrus or an asteroid, then it’s going to be robots, Terminator style (not Cylon style because the ending of BSG sucked balls). I can handle being shot to shit, having my limbs ripped off or even being man-raped by a killer android, but I am so not cool with this creepy little fucker having his mechanical way with me.