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.

If you live in Tokyo chances are you’ve seen the invasion of lifesize Coca-Cola robots wandering the streets. “Drink human, or I’ll pop your puny head”. Now you can own your own miniature version of the wandering Coke robot to keep you company on your desktop.

Nothing says robotics like a caffeinated robot. When you combine Japanimation and Coca-Cola vending machines, the result is supreme geekiness. If regular Coke isn’t your thing, there’s also a black Coca-Cola Zero robot waiting for you.

We’ve seen tons of spider robots throughout the years in all kinds of Sci-Fi flicks. Now they’re about ready to head from the big screen to creepy reality. BAE Systems is getting $38 million from the US Army Research Lab to fund the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) consortium; a team of scientists and researchers devoted to developing an “autonomous, multifunctional collection of miniature intelligence-gathering robots that can operate in places too inaccessible or dangerous for humans.”

It has to be some small relief to know that after the robot spiders gain self awareness and kill us, real spiders won’t be safe either. Unless the robot and biological spiders converge…Actually, you know what, none of this is good. It’s a good time to pack your truck for a little apocalypse vacation in the mountains, raise your kid and call him John Connor, then start killing ANYTHING with more then two legs. If it has two legs and an exoskeleton, even.

There are a few things that most of geekdom has in common, one is an insatiable lust for all things gadget and the other is an undeniable need to own anything robotic even when the robots gizmos are meant for kids. The latter affliction is easier (and less embarrassing) to indulge in if you have kids, which thankfully I do.

Not too long ago I spent some “testing” time with the UGOBE Pleo robot dinosaur and it was cool but I thought it would be cooler if a robot actually looked like a robot. Disney agreed and has announced a new Pleo-esq robot based on the WALL-E movie hitting the silver screen this summer. The toy is called Ultimate WALL-E and it will go on sale this fall for $189.99.

Everything in Japan has to be made to look cute. Even urinal cleaning robots have to be made to look like elephants. He does his job pretty quickly. His job is to be pushed ass first against the urinal and scrub and clean away.

I’m not sure if it qualifies as a robot, but it does qualify as amazingly freaky and bizarre. This thing can’t even swallow the urinal on it’s own, it has to be pushed. If this guy is cleaning urinals, who’s cleaning him? It’s got to get pretty funky inside that robot, after cleaning urinals all day too. Check out the video below.

I love robot art when it’s done right. That is to say when it is visually interesting and not just the same old thing. These awesome CGI images by Andre Kutscherauer are certainly awesome. Some of the works have titles like Brute Force, Selfillumination and Dandelion of Screws, and once you have a look, you can’t help but be very impressed.

Unlike most things these days, the work actually makes you think. More then that, it makes you think outside of the box. If you don’t believe me, go have a look at the artist’s site. This stuff is awesome. Where else can you see robots plugging themselves in?

As far as robot speakers that could come alive and eat your face, I’d have to say this is one of the strangest I’ve seen. It’s the i-Spin Speaker Robot from Sega Toys. A world where robots evolved from eggs? This would be the result. He will dance to whatever the current tune being played is, and features connectivity to audio players thanks to a connecting cable.

As well as dancing and proclaiming itself the Egg-man goo goo g’joob, it will also respond to external audio and voice signals. He’s powered by 3 AAA batteries and comes in blue and pink. As we all know, the cost of eggs is on the rise, so that probably accounts for the price tag of $52.

Azimuth is a watch manufacturer in Switzerland. They’ve announced their Mr. Roboto watch, the world’s first vintage tin robot concept timepiece. All those who have a love of all things robot, like myself, have collectively wet our pants.

The idea is that it’s based on those retro tin robots that old people grew up with. It’s a revival of those vintage tin robotic spacemen. The time is easy to read and the appearance is awesome. The left ‘eye’ is for the hour, the right ‘eye’ comes with GMT indication, the nose region joint with the mouth region are the seconds. It will be available from September 2008 with the international retail price of about $4,800 USD. Well, it’s out of my price range, but it’s one of the coolest watches I’ve ever seen.

And everyone knows that in the future everything will look like The Jetsons. We’ll have floating cities with escalators attached and robots will steal old people’s medicine, but that’s another story. This Humax LCD TV concept is designed by London’s Tej Chauhan. It’s pretty “future-retro”, combining the old retro look with a fresh take on the World of Tomorrow.

Just think 1950′s era renderings of the future. The device would feel right at home in any number of old Sci-fi shows and movies. We have no idea if this will actually become an honest to god consumer product, but until it does, you can always check it out at the Zona Tortona design show, between April 16th to the 21st. If you happen to live in Italy. The rest of us will just have to watch the Jetsons.

Our favorite droid from the Star Wars saga has had more products built in his likeness then there are stars in the solar system. Chalk up another. The R2-D2 home telephone wants to take up space in your geek home and heart.

One of the legs unhooks as a standard handset. Features include head spinning and flashing lights when a call comes in (or at the push of a button if you want to impress your friends), ring selection (which can be standard, animation or R2-D2 noises), last number redial and volume control. It retails for £79.99.