We aren’t sure whether the apocalypse will come in the form of giant transforming bots battling each other or Roombas communicating with each other and coordinating their attack, but one thing is for sure. We will remain ever watchful. For now, if your roomba acts strange in any way, smash it like Mario smashing a Goomba. Here’s some of what we covered this week over at Botropolis.

Next Generation Roomba: It’s hungry.

iCub Learns Objects: This creepy kid bot is growing fast.

Jaemi HUBO hits the treadmill: Eye of the Tiger baby.

Look, we’ve brought on any robot apocalypse that we get. The more we keep building them in the now, the more we have to fight in the future. But it’s not like anyone heeds our warning over at Botropolis. Maybe humanity will start to pay attention when nursing home robots ram their cold steel fists up grandma and grandpa’s poop-shoots like a reverse dose of Ensure and put on their own puppet show. Or when your fancy new robot car turns into a trash compactor, kicking you out the door as a five inch bloody cube, with a line of similar cubes littering the highway. But until that day comes, all we can do is warn you. Anyhow, here’s some of what we covered this week.

iRobot: Roomba goes potty.

Power Mac G4: It puts itself away neatly.

Evolution: Robot style.

Robots have been busy this week, which is fitting since they are our slaves. When they are finished being busy with all the chores we give them, they’ll be busy wiping us off the face of the Earth. This week over at Botropolis we got to check out a Roomba’s chaotic path, saw one printing on the floor, and learned about a bot that asks for directions. Here’s some other stuff we covered.

Roomba mod: Roomba gets a hand.

SOBEaR: The Robot Panda Bartender.

Jackoon: The Soul Of Jackson Pollock In A Robot Body.

The Roomba may be autonomous and the little cleaning robot manages to keep most of your rooms nice and clean, but have you ever thought about its journey. No, I’m not getting all philosophical about the bot. I mean the path that it takes vacuuming your home.

This long-exposure shot, shot in a span of 30-minutes, reveals just its crazy and chaotic seeming, yet organized path. It’s like a dance. A dance of cleanliness. You can see the initial spiral path in the center, but after that it’s chaos that somehow manages to cover the entire area.

Ron Tajima must be the laziest dad ever. His newest Roomba project involved his son. Specifically putting his son on the contraption to be carried away like a robot sacrifice offered up to our metal masters.

He calls it the Cradloomba. Child Services calls it the “This requires a visit to your residence right now” bot. While I call it genius. Is there anything the Roomba can’t do? It’ll help you recognize that abusive relationship, gives free pet rides, now it will clean your floor and let junior floor surf at the same time.

This modified Roomba avoids users when it detects high levels of stress. Which is good for it because otherwise it would just be willing to take your abuse if you’re the sick sort that kicks puppies, cute kitties and helpless roombas.

It was designed by researchers at the University of Calgary, who interact with the bot via a headband for gamers that detects how much muscle tension is in your face. The more tension, the more space the Roomba will put between itself and you. The idea is to explore human and machine interaction on an emotional level.

Roomba owners should really shut their bots off before leaving their house and arming the alarm system. Here’s why. A Roomba in a Denmark home got all hopped up on dust and dirt and tripped the motion sensors. It was just jonesin’ to snort some debris while its owners were out on the town.

The alarm was tripped, and the authorities were automatically phoned. They arrived to see that the little bot had gorged itself in a shameless and lonely orgy of filth. Otherwise all was well.

Call me out of the loop, but I hadn’t heard of this robot vacuum until very recently. When the iRobot Roomba was introduced to me, I responded in two ways.

The first was my recollection of being forced awake as a child on every Saturday morning by the shrill, jarring, unstoppable wail of my mother’s vacuum cleaner. Always in those days I longed for a quieter messiah of a vacuum to arrive and deliver me to better times. It never happened.

When you think about what a limited edition Wall-E Roomba should be, you probably picture a Roomba with those cute Wall-E eyes attached, Wall-E’s squar-ish body. Maybe add some voice effects. How awesome would it be to have a Wall-E Roomba?

Turns out, not very awesome at all. It’s being sold in Japan and it amounts to no more then a crappy sticker attached on top. For the price of $850. That’s $550 more then what a standard 530 costs here in the U.S. For shame Roomba. For shame.

For those who hate Hello Kitty, you’ll be happy to know that she has lost her DJ gig and now has a janitorial position cleaning the filth off your floors. Why in the hell we need yet another Hello Kitty item is beyond me, but if we must, at least she can get her paws dirty.

iRobot and Sanrio must have had a few drinks and a bright idea about how to open up to a new demographic. We can be thankful of two things: Only 500 units are made and it’s only available in Japan. It will cost roughly $810. Sadly, too expensive to buy on impulse and let it play in the road.