And one is available for this peculiar little four-bottle $US40 wine rack. If nothing else, it’s a quirky take on the venerable counter-top wine rack. [Etsy via Cool Material via Gear Fuse]

The robot polar bears are part of the zoo’s holiday exhibit, and it’s unclear if they’ll be around after the season is over. Let’s face it, though. These would have to be some damn good robot bears to convince me to see them over live polar bears.

PETA is encouraging the zoo to keep developing the animatronic animals, but listen PETA, hear me out. Sure, you’re trying to keep animals out of captivity. You’re also promoting the creation of an advanced, highly mobile robot bear army.

I encourage you to rethink your position. [Inhabitots via Inhabitat]

OSA PB2 “Less-Lethal” Multipurpose Pistol
Ever since I watched Rosa Klebb trying to kill Bond with her shoe-dagger, I considered the Russians the world experts in tiny hideaway weapons. The PB2 is an eeency-weeency little double-barrelled “less-lethal” pistol weighing less than 200g, firing anything from rubber bullets to flares to flashbangs. It’s also got a safety and integral laser sights, which can be upgraded to near–Scott Summers strength on order. Just don’t practice on some poor country bumpkin like they did here. [OSA]

DrugWipe by Securetec
The DrugWipe is what makes the customs guys all-knowing. It’s a tiny drug test in a pocket. These plastic sticks can test up to four classes of illegal drugs in a single go. According to Securetec’s PR guy, your saliva can give you away 12 hours after doing — or even just being near — cocaine, weed, opium, meth or whathaveyou. All the government grunts have to do is wipe your tongue. Won’t open your mouth? They can also swipe your sweat and random stuff you’re carrying. [Securetec]

Spy Watch
When I approached the director of a small security/protection company to ask about this normal-looking watch, he wouldn’t tell me a whole lot. What I managed to squeeze out of him is that although it’s normal size, it also records audio and video. Near the two o’clock mark you can see a tiny lens, activated by buttons on the side. He wasn’t the only cagey guy on the show floor — the guys in a nearby booth forbade me from taking pictures of their micro surveillance gear.

Trikke uPT
The Trikke uPT (ultralight personal transporter) was the funnest (and funniest) thing at the entire expo, and that’s saying a lot when you’re surrounded by a pirateload of guns. It’s an idea so simple its inventor, the dark-suited Dutchman whizzing around on it, couldn’t figure why his potential buyers would spend any money at all on the wayyyy more expensive Segways parked in the next booth. The uPT is a trike tricked out with a 250W electric motor and a 35km range lithium-ion battery; it weighs just over 16kg. And like that blasted Segway, there are plenty of models to choose from. [Trikke]

RiotBot by Technorobot
The RiotBot is billed by its makers as “the first robot for riot control”. It uses a PS3-looking remote controller to zip this PepperBall-equipped metal beast at 20km/h into all kinds of riots. The carbine fires at 700 rounds per minute and can be operated for two hours. [Technorobot]

MaxFit Gloves
It’s usually next to impossible to do precise tasks with gloves on. Most of the time, your hands move around in the gloves, you can’t feel what you’re holding and you end up feeling as useless as a eunuch in a whorehouse. But the MaxFit workgloves are fanfriggintastic. They were the thinnest, grippiest workgloves I had ever worn. Their try-out test was having me grip an Armor-All lubed PVC tube, then try to twist it out of my hand — it didn’t budge. Unfortunately, though the site advertises that it’s good for construction, DIYers and backyard work, I couldn’t help but wonder what ulterior activities they were promoting it for at a security show. [MaxFit]

Piexon Guardian Angel
The Guardian Angel is a tiny plastic toy that looks like your niece’s water pistol, but it’s actually a lightweight, disposable two-shot explosive-propelled pepper-spray gun. The cartridges give it way more range than a spray can. Just don’t carry it around in Scandinavia or other places where it’s banned, or they’ll arrest you for it (like they nearly did with me two months ago). Buy the way, it’s interesting to note that the Piexon website names “liberal politics” as a chief reason for needing more protection these days. [Piexon]

Rimmex 288 Prototype Amphibot
The Rimmex 288 is a prototype amphibious robot that can roll straight into water — streams, rivers and lakes mostly, or just very muddy terrain — and then roll right back out again. Its single arm with six degrees of freedom can be swapped with whatever you like — from a gun to an X-ray, apparently, depending on your, uh, objectives. [ROV Developpement]

Apoorva Prasad is a freelance writer and photographer based in Paris, France, who recently covered the Milipol 2009 military-police expo for us. He has a thing for holo-scoped assault rifles and sounds disappointed when admitting he’s never been Tased.

Amy Hopper, the play’s director, cast one autonomous, military-grade flying robot and five smaller remote-control devices as fairies in Shakespeare’s comedy. “To see them flying, spinning and bouncing through the air just adds to the magic and mystery of the world Shakespeare created,” she explained.

But the drama department isn’t the only one interested in the robotic thespians. Researchers in the school’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering are studying how the audience reacts to the robots for application in robotic search-and-rescue missions.

“It’s now possible for these unmanned aerial vehicles to be used for evacuation or crowd control,” explained Robin Murphy, one of the researchers. “But what’s missing is an understanding of what makes a person trust or fear the robot.” Murphy and others in the department are now poring over the data they collected during the play’s run which ended earlier this week. [PopSci and PhysOrg]

You might remember that Jackson had once planned a 15m mecha with a moving face that shot lasers, but it never got built.

From the eBay Listing:

The original 3D scan data of Michael Jackson. It also includes the colour map from this scan in either CPV or UV maps. This data was collected using the same equipment that creates the data used to create video games and or CGI avatars to make him speak, laugh, sing or dance.

I must emphasise that the sale of this scan data is subject to the purchaser agreeing to clear the proper rights with the MJ Estate before it is publicly used in a promotional or commercial manner.

I bet you need to emphasise that. Even if the data isn’t a hoax (and I’m sceptical), I can’t see the Jackson Estate letting this fly without a lawsuit. We’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, an MJ fan found the auction and created this animation using only the 2D shots shown above. It’s all pretty creepy… just let the man rest in peace.

[Huffington Post via Techie.com.ph]

A spillover from last week’s Cyborg-a-thon, Wired has put together a list of the top 10 cyborg videos. But not everything is about fusing man with machine.

As you can see in the sample videos above, sometimes we choose to make bionic monkeys and insects. Truly, it’s the weirdest of the weird sciences. Check out Wired for the complete list. [Wired]

The only problem is that Robolamps have not gone commercial, but if they did, I have no doubt that they would sell. Well, maybe not the robot that looks like it’s admiring its own giant wang, but other than that… [Robolamp on Facebook via Pocket-Lint]

[Hizook via Engadget]

And yes, that even means saying goodbye to Aimee Mullins. She was with us for three essays, all of which dealt with issues of prostheses from unexpected perspectives, that few of us will soon forget. In case you missed any, we’ll list them again right here:

Is Choosing a Prosthesis So Different than Picking a Pair of Glasses?
Racing on Carbon Fibre Legs: How Abled Should We Be?
Normal Was Never Cool: Inception of Perception

Of course, what we really tried to explore is that prosthetics are both around us already (is a smartphone with a Bluetooth headset anything but?) and will continue to be integral in our self-improvement, from implantable computers to programming our body’s biological robots to do our bidding.

A big thanks to Aimee Mullins, Marc Hodosh at TEDMED and all of our contributors to the week:

Michael Specter at The New Yorker
Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous

Anna Jane Grossman
Psychic Powers, Cochlear Implants, and My Bionic Ex-Boyfriend

Dr. Debby Herbenick from The Kinsey Institute
Becoming a Sexual Cyborg (NSFW)

Daniel H. Wilson
Me and My Exoskeleton: The Trick to Super Strength

And in case all of that wasn’t enough, to read all of the stories from This Cyborg Life, use this link.

Tokyo company HiBot is developing a robot to transfer the dangerous duties of high-voltage wire inspection from meat-based humans to metal-based robots, in a move intended not just to decrease the likelihood of flash-frying technicians, but to make the inspection process — vital, now that many countries’ electrical infrastructures have components approaching 100 years old — more efficient.

The HiBot Exliner, pictured above and set to deploy in Japan, is the second such robot, and the most ambitious: While the LineScout, pictured at top and currently in trials in Canada, only inspects one line at a time, the Expliner will cover four. And unlike their human counterparts, Exliner and LineScout don’t even care if the lines are left active while they’re doing their respective things, because they ain’t got nothin’ to lose, y’know? Also: because they’re properly insulated. [IEEE via Make]