It’s obvious that we can’t let just anyone be an intern with us here at the ‘Brick (along with the other Pragmatic Labs sites) so earlier this year we took time out to pour through all of the applications of intern hopefuls. Unfortunately there was only one application in the stack, but on the upside it did make for an easy decision.

Since then we’ve had the enjoyment of Horatio around the Pragma-plex, constantly giving suggestions, asking questions and soaking up the technology blogging industry like a sponge. I do think he’s enjoying himself but sometimes it’s kinda’ hard to tell. We’ve published a few videos showing what Horatio’s been up to and some insight into his interests. You can see some of our favorites after the jump or check out all of them at the SlipperyBrickTV channel on YouTube.

Thank you Horatio!

Let me say this right off. If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s bicycle riding robots. It just makes us easier to catch come Robo-Judgement day. That being said, this robot is amazing to watch in action. The Murata Boy was developed in Japan and can ride a bicycle like you and me. Well, actually a whole lot better.

He’s got Gyro Sensors so he can detect position and balance itself accordingly. He can even identify if a surface is uneven, with obstacles or is as smooth as a human’s bottom. It transmits images back to a computer for future reference and analysis. Apparently, this creation is the product of trying to develop a robot that can lift heavy loads and assist in perilous terrain sites. I fully expect to see these chasing people through fiery streets. If not I’ll be disappointed.

Check out this spoof of The Shining with Tribot as Danny and 2 Femisapiens as the twin girls. It’s great for a hearty geek laugh. After seeing this mini movie, I firmly believe that we should be re-creating all sorts of classic movies with robots. All the time. Toy robots. Go on, you know you want to click it.

Our favorite makers of home robots, iRobot, won’t be satisfied until one of their creations kills us dead at home under the guise of cleaning or tidying up. One day your local police will have a special RV unit. That stands for Robotics Victim.

Anywho, iRobot has filed an iPatent for a lawn-mowing robot. It’s an 84-page filing with a variety of configurations, even an all-electric model and gas-electric hybrid. Some have acoustic and optical sensors that would seem to allow the robot to “avoid hard surfaces, water and other barriers”. Look, I’m on board with any bot you wanna put in my home. All I ask is that it’s aware of the fact that my heart pulled through my chest will kill me dead. Well, that and I want it to not be thrilled with that image.

For those of you who don’t like the awesome Star Wars USB hubs we told you about last night, maybe robots are your thing. In that case check out this cool Ultraman USB drive if you need something cool and USB related.

I’m not sure if Ultraman is technically a robot or not, but this USB drive looks cute,stunted and he’s a limited edition. He’s got 2GB of storage capacity and only 3,000 will be made. No word on pricing and availability yet.

If you want a remote that says, “Freeze or I’ll turn your planet to rubble.”, or “Flash Gordon refuses to watch this crap any longer.” then this is for you.

Ray guns were a staple of Sci-Fi from the 40’s through the 60’s, isn’t it about time you changed channels with one? Damn straight. Cuz geeks are all about pretend, even when they’re watching some other people pretending to cruise through space on T.V. The price won’t zap you at only $18, but you’ll need to wait until August 16th when it’s available. This is great for fighting robots.

We knew it had to happen sooner or later. And it will happen often from here on out. Geeks love LEGO and we also love adorable robots. Building a LEGO Wall-E is serious business too. Joe Meno, editor of Brickjournal magazine, took three months planning it and the end result is a beautiful thing to behold. The end result is a Lego robot with a moving neck and arms, plus rolling treads. Wall-E was cute already. In Lego form he’s twice as awesome. But what about Eve?

All of you lonely nerds whose robots have committed boticide because they couldn’t handle another MST3K marathon (or maybe they are just plain sexed out) can now take heart. You can now build Wall-E, the ultimate in robot cuteness. That’s right, you can have a friend once again. Someone to love forever and ever. He’s even got a little storage area in his chest for your porn collection or whatever. The original creator of this DIY Wall-E wrote a 50 step tutorial to make it easy. Go build one now. Then show us your robot. Be sure to check out the video below.

If you love robots like I do, you’ll notice very quickly the complete lack of robot flash drives. Where’s the robot love? Team is doing something about that with their “T-Bot R50″ robot-shaped flash drives that were shown off at the Computex event. Looks like they’ll come in 1GB,2GB,4GB and 8GB sizes. You can choose between red, white, blue or black. They have a cool retro look.

This has got to be the coolest Lego Johnny Five from Short Circuit I have ever seen. It’s creator is user rack911 from The Brothers Brick. (No relation to us, but on the Brick family tree somewhere)

Go ahead and check out a ton of pictures of the project at the Brickshelf Gallery. See, this is the kind of thing that Lego needs to be paying attention to. I would buy it and you would buy it. End of story. Robots are cool, Legos are cool. Put the two together and it’s geek magic. He did an excellent job.

WowWee has a new robot headed our way, and it’s not your typical bot. The Wrex The Dawg robot is a more or less hilarious and entertaining cartoon character come to life. Check out the video below to see his antics and cool features. Stuff like: Rubbing his robo-ass across the floor like a bad dog, fake peeing with funny sound effects, sneezing, and slot machine eyes that look help a whole lot with the cartoon feel.

You can even turn him into a cat, which he does pretty convincingly. Put him on guard duty and he’ll act like a guard dog. The remote is styled like an oversize industrial remote for some reason. Pretty cool stuff. I would say he’s a cut above most “dog” robots.

What’s the one thing we need more of in the 21st century? If you said that we need more robots performing daring feats, you’re in luck. It just so happens that on Saturday, the Panasonic Evolta battery robot, a 17-centimeter tall super-hero looking bot and all around bundle of cuteness, scaled a 500-meter cliff at the Grand Canyon.

It was a publicity stunt of course, to show-off the endurance of the Evolta AA alkaline batteries. The Guinness Book of World Records already recognizes the batteries as the longest-lasting of their kind. The robot, powered by just a pair of Evoltas, pulled itself up 530 meters of rope, finally reaching the top after 6 hours and 45 minutes. I don’t know about you, but if you show me a cool robot doing cool stuff I’m gonna buy your batteries.

This is how the future was supposed to be. While you are just sitting around laughing it up, your robot slave is busy doing all the gruntwork. Things like mowing the lawn for instance. This little guy seen in the accompanying video works his metal ass off, never complaining.

He’s entertaining to watch as he’s doing your chore. He even has to stop at one point to wipe the sweat from his brow. He clearly doesn’t get any respect. He just does his job. It’s all well and good until he runs into the doghouse.

Sometimes the coolest gadgets in Sci-Fi are not gadgets at all. But robots. Here’s a look at some of the most memorable robots from sci-fi in no particular order. It’s not a complete list. Think of it more as a walk down memory lane. Because geeks love Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi has a long history of loving robots.

The future isn’t all cuddly robots and sunshine my friends. In fact, some would say it’s going to be a nightmare. And I ain’t just talking about a future where Regis Philbin’s corpse gets re-animated and feeds on brains, though surely that’s part of it. It may be downright nasty and apocalyptic.

That’s where the latest concept by frogDesign comes in. It’s called A Digital Escape, and would allow the wearer to compliment their personal reality with such things as exclusive visuals, sounds and even smells. Frogdesign describes it as a way to, “live with the troubles we’ve already caused,” in our world.