Well, it’s Friday and you know what that means. It’s time to take a look at some of the things we covered over at Botropolis this week. Whether we like it or not, robots are here to stay. Our job is simply to document the coming apocalypse for future generations. If there are any. So lets take a look at what happened this week.

3 Tenors of Terror: Creepy bots sing Happy Birthday.

i-SOBOT pimps his ride: Gets a new Steam Tank.

AIMEC:3: Karaoke singing bot.

Robot Mythbusters?: Sure looks like it.

Jen Hui Liao’s self-portrait machine will snap a picture of you. After that you are more or less handcuffed to a drawing board as it forces you to sketch your own likeness. So a robot is enslaving you for once. Just for a little while.

Jen Hui Liao is exploring the fact that “our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship.” Whatever. I just picture all future robots forcing us to do art for their walls, while we hang in the closet between masterpieces being fed intravenously.

Pimping your ride with new shocks, struts, and a more powerful engine is all well and good, but if it can’t get by on looks alone what’s the point? These art cars are real lookers. These mini Coopers put the geek on the street my brotha.

Who wouldn’t love a Pac-man and Space Invaders themed car? These beauties were designed by Matt W. Moore, who clearly has a love of retro arcade games. This Pac-Man version is the best. Click through to see the Space Invaders car, which also rocks my geek socks.

This just may be the most awesome and nerdiest chess set ever. You’re looking at Paul Fryer’s Vacuum Tube Chess set. It’s one of only seven made. The pieces actually light up when they’re plugged in to the board.

How cool is that? The only thing that sucks is that you would need to replace blown tubes from time to time, but we don’t care. We just wanna play chess with Vacuum tubes that really light up.

When you really start to think about the sheer number of gadgets in the world, it’s amazing they aren’t littering the streets and roadways like cold tech corpses. After all, we keep buying them and them throwing them out to buy another.

But we aren’t here to preach. We’re just impressed by this beautiful reminder of our consumerism in the form of sculpted cardboard gadgets. These are works of art really. They are from British designer Kyle Bean and they are really nicely detailed.

This bank is like a game of Connect Four. Except, that you would need to connects thousands…Of coins. I won. Where? There, diagonally. Pretty sneaky sis! This bank stands on its own and is a piece of furniture all by itself. It’s called the Coin Bank and I can only guess that when it is emptied from the bottom, it’s like winning big in Vegas as the coins pile up around you.

The design is simple. Just two pieces of glass pressed together with pegs between. Just drop your change in on top and watch it fall. All of the coins stay in place until you unlock and empty it.

Jorge Colombo’s cover for the June 1, 2009 issue of The New Yorker was created entirely in the Brushes iPhone app. Jorge told The New York Times that the device allows him to work “without having to carry all my pens and brushes and notepads with me.” And with results like the image above, what’s the difference really?

In this way an artist can also work without parking an easel and canvas along with art supplies in a public space, which allows him to be left alone. For this cover, he spent an hour on 42nd Street, and had no interruptions.

Edmund Dohnert has always had some uncertainty about whether he’s an artist or an engineer. We don’t really care. His works are just plain cool. And yes, they are both art and engineering. Just plain fun to look at and watch.

For instance, the Victor Rat Trap No. 1 pictured above has a knight repeatedly attacking an evil jester in order to save He-Man’s life. The only power source is a simple rat trap on a wooden base. The rat trap’s spring can be pulled all the way back and held, thanks to a cord and roller arrangement attached to a crank shaft.

Here’s an E-reader for those who like to burn their literature after reading. A clever wood worker fashioned this Kindle out of wood using a laser cutter and dubbed it the Amazon Kindling.

Some advantages: The battery will never betray you. It will provide warmth if you burn it after reading. Termites will eat something intellectual. And it will biodegrade long before Amazon’s version.

I knew there was a use for all of those old VHS tapes in the closet. Seven, count ‘em, seven VHS tapes are holding up this light bulb. Whether it’s old Sanford and Son shows or Star Trek the Next Generation, old television is the new way to light your home.

As the creator points out, the lamp is designed to be used with a CFL (compact flourescent) bulb ONLY. A standard bulb might get too hot and melt your VHS tapes. There’s nothing worse than a mound of melted tape. Trust me on that one. Goes well with the VHS toaster.

If you are the environmentally friendly type, the Loewe Art SL HDTV has just been introduced and you’ll want to check it out. It’s touted as the greenest HDTV from the company to date. And it doesn’t sacrifice specs and design.

This 1080p LCD display comes with an Eco Mode that lets you control how much power it uses and the automatic light dimming uses up to 20% less than when it runs normally. In standby mode, the Loewe Art SL sucks just 0.7 watts. As you might expect, these power saving features don’t come cheap.

Vending Machine from Ellie Harrison on Vimeo.
So the other day we saw a vending machine that quenches your thirst during an emergency. The British now have their own vending machine that does one better. It dispenses snacks when the BBC reports bad news about the economy.

Why, we would be fed all day here in the US. I can get behind this kind of machine. The whole deal is actually an art project designed and created by Ellie Harrison as part of her residency at the Plymouth College of Art. The monitor on the right tracks the BBC’s RSS feed, and whenever doom and gloom news stories hit, you get a snack.

I know that you can hardly wait for the Terminator Salvation movie to hit. So here’s something to tide you over until opening day. Titan Books just released the Terminator concept art of the Moto-Terminator. That’s where a Terminator is riding a motorcycle, or is the cycle, or transforms into a cycle. Or whatever. Either way it isn’t good for John Conner.

It’s the Ducati Hypermotard. When the Terminator fuses with the bike, it be an all new killing machine with the familiar red eyes.

Here’s something that I guarantee you haven’t seen on the road. A transparent Lexus. It’s pretty amazing to behold. It was born from a collaboration between Lexus and Japanese architect Huzimoto Takeshi. Were talking a true one-of-a-kind, now you see it now you don’t Lexus LF-A wearing a shell of transparent acrylic.

As cool as it is, there’s no way you could drive it. You’d feel all naked and like you were riding in thin air. It’s more of a work of art. How cool would this car look in the rain?

They used to say that when you get arrested, don’t go singing like a bird and giving up all of your buddies. Well, times have sure changed. Now it’s the man who sings like a bird and rats you out to everyone. If you get arrested in Denton, Texas, your mugshot will be blasted all over Twitter with your age and crime.

But this isn’t some innovation from the Texas penal system to humiliate lawbreakers, just a clever art student’s comment on how much information is floating around out there. Sometimes the power of Twitter can be downright scary.