It’s Friday. That means it’s time to take a look at the week that was in robotics news. We saw all of the usual suspects over at Botropolis this week. Those that can kill us, those that can’t kill us but want to, those that clean up after us and those who plan to clean up after the last of us are dead. Here’s just some of what we covered this week.

DustCar Garbage Robot: He’s no Wall-E, but it’s a start.

RX-64: Servos that break bones.

KASPAR: Helping Kids With Autism.

Robot Sheep shearing: Do androids dream of shearing electric sheep?

We’ve seen the scenario in many futuristic Sci-fi movies. Some fancy machine turns your urine into actual drinkable water. It’s a very real concept. Once you take out all of the bad stuff, what do you think is left? Water. That’s what.

To use the H2O filter, just urinate straight into it, then put the lid on. For some reason the next step is to squeeze it between your knees to get the filter doing it’s job. Squeezing your knees together usually comes before this part, when you need to pee real bad. Next, just drink up from the spout at the bottom.

Radio Valerie, designed by Valentin Vodev, is a radio concept that is at the same time sultry and silly. Sultry thanks to it’s curves, silly because I swear it looks like this thing is smoking an antenna or has an antenna thermometer.

You can fully control the radio without having using buttons or switches, since the antenna acts as your control stick to find stations, and a speaker up top can be turned to control the volume. I don’t know, it looks like a dancing cigarette butt.

The Breathing Bud is exactly that, a buddy that will help with your breathing. It’s a concept that gives you a visual look at the air quality in your home using pretty colors. It was designed to look like a plant bud, even though it more closely resembles rabbit ears.

Vents at the base suck in the air for analysis. A blue bud means good quality air, while pink means not so good. Or as Aerosmith might say, the rabbit done died. The Breathing Bud is connected via USB to your computer, where it will transfer it’s data.

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.

The scarecrows of yesterday were designed to be scary. As the name implies, they were there to guard crops and keep crows away. It could do with an update however. These days crows and other animals are smarter.

This conceptual scarecrow is armed with an infrared sensor eye that can detect animals within a 16,000 square meter range. When an animal is near, it will go into in an Ultrasonic Wave Generation mode. The device would be equipped with solar panel wings, making them completely self-sufficient. Any varmint that gets too close will suffer a small jolt to scare them away.

Are you one of those people who can’t seem to wake up on time no matter what you do? You should probably get more sleep, but failing that you want an alarm clock like this concept. The Shrieking Ball concept alarm clock, if it ever sees production, should come with a lifetime guarantee that it will wake you pretty damn quick.

That’s because it will sound off until you lift the main orb from the base. As it shrieks, you’ll have to place it down just so in its cradle in order to stop the little hellspawn. I think this is a sure way to get somebody awake in the morning.

It’s like a Mac and a folder in one. The Mac Folder. Not all that different from any other laptop really, but you probably want Apple to make one very soon. The UI has been redesigned to work like the interfaces seen on the iPod Touch and iPhone.

You’ll also get a multi-touch screen and it’s uber thin. But what’s with those huge keyboard keys? They look big enough for grandma to use. After she calls you and asks you how that is.

Typically, translating any book into braille more than doubles its thickness. But with e-books that doesn’t have to happen. Designer Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo and Jin-Sun Park want more blind people to be able to enjoy books, so they created this Braille e-book concept.

The idea is that this is a braille Kindle. Using EAP technology, it can change the surface pattern via an electromagnetic signal that will simulate braille text. It’s an elegant and simple solution that would enrich the lives of blind readers quite a bit.

Designer Alisson Wilson Ströher’s IMO coffee maker is all about being compact and practical for your home. But it looks like a robot arm. Everytime I had coffee I would be sad that I don’t have the rest of the robot. I might search online and see if I can order his other parts, which would make me sadder. Because you can’t.

Would you keep a robot arm in your kitchen? This coffee maker can adjust its height so you can fill cups of any size. You can also brew three packets of coffee without changing the water inside. It’s only a concept, but if it existed, it would cost just $130.

Tokyo-based designer Mac Funamizu is at it again. This time he has come up with a concept design for a phone that Wonder Woman would love to have in her invisible jet. The Glassy Glassy cell phone concept.

The entire phone is transparent until you turn it on. That’s when the screen and keypad light up so you can press the buttons accordingly. It’s sure to get lost easier and blend into its surroundings. Where the battery is, I have no idea. Hopefully, its stronger than glass.

This concept turns your SS card into a gadget. The Troika Social Security card concept comes with a built-in thumbprint reader, buttons that can change the display from your Social Security info to your Driver’s License or passport.

That way, you can carry just one card on your person and have everything. It features an aluminum body, so it would be tough. The drawback is that if you lose it, you lose everything. And if a identity theif gets it, they get everything, because no matter how good that thumbprint reader is, it can be hacked.

Why park your afterburners in an ordinary chair when you can sit still and look like you are flying in this thing? In case it wasn’t obvious, designer Gianni Pedone based the Morfojet chair on a pair of jet turbines.

It doesn’t just look sweet, the Morfojet also has a built-in CD player and speakers. It’s so awesome that a pair of aviator goggles should be required just to sit in it. When you’ve got turbines as arm rests, that says power. But why did they not put giant speakers in the turbines? That would have completed it nicely.

We customize many things in our lives, whether it’s faceplates for phones or skins for computers. But cars haven’t been all that customizable. At least there’s been no easy way to do it. Sure, in the 80s people were putting bras on their cars. Sickos. And you can see some awesome paint jobs, but those are permanent.

This concept is all about the car’s surface displaying an image. We’re talking your car as a giant display. There would be many templates available for various car models, plus you’ll be able to make some yourself. Your car’s design can be updated wirelessly and even shared on the web. We’ll likely never see it since it would make bank robberies easier for the getaway car.

A group of designers have come up with a new gadget that allows you to keep track of how much water you waste while showering. The concept consists of three devices working together. The REFRESH-N-REMIND shower monitor, REDUCE-YOUR-USE mat and the RELAX-N-REUSE seat.

It reminds me of a Wii accessory if Nintendo made shower related games. With the REDUCE-YOUR-USE mat, the water turns off when you back away. The RELAX-N-REUSE seat lets you sit while you shave and collects water to be re-used watering plants etc. The REFRESH-N-REMIND monitor will clue you in on how much water you are using.