Last weekend’s Fright Flick episode on Undead Backbrain featured two short films about robots with attitude. The main feature — Hanger No. 5 (US-2008; short [11:10 min]; dir. Nathan Matsuda) — is an Indiana-Jonesish adventure in which two fortune-hunting scavengers enter an abandoned military establishment dating from the 1950s and come face-to-face with some long-dormant mechanical experiments in robotic warfare. View it here.
Its secondary support feature is a very nice vignette from the UK: Recovered (UK-2009; short [3:23 min]; dir. Joe Efstathiou and Alfredo Antonio Cozz). This one offers a Cloverfield-like view of a giant robot attack. Excellent.
An army of robot explorers that are capable of self-command and situation evaluation, and which remain in constant contact with each other to allow for greater flexibility of action, has been envisaged as the future of space exploration by the director of Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, Professor Wolfgang Fink.
The concept of “tier-scalable reconnaissance” involves orbiters, robotic airships and expendable ground-level robots coordinating with each other to investigate the landscapes of planetary bodies such as the moons of Saturn in a more flexible and effective way than current paradigms allow. “It’s sort of like commanding a small army of robots operating in space, in the air and on the ground simultaneously,” he said.
In this mission scenario, an orbiter would circle Titan with a global view of the moon, with an air balloon or airship floating overhead to provide a birds-eye view of mountain ranges, lakes and canyons. On the ground, a rover or lake lander would explore the moon’s nooks and crannies. The orbiter would “speak” directly to the air balloon and command it to fly over a certain region for a closer look. This aerial balloon would be in contact with several small rovers on the ground and command them to move to areas identified from overhead.
“One day an entire fleet of robots will be autonomously commanded at once. This armada of robots will be our eyes, ears, arms and legs in space, in the air, and on the ground, capable of responding to their environment without us, to explore and embrace the unknown,” he added.
Astroboy (or Tetsuwan Atomu, “Mighty Atom”, as he is called in Japan) was originally created in comic form by manga legend Osamu Tezuka in 1952. In the early 1960s, Tetsuwan Atomu was made into an animated TV series, which was a huge success worldwide (as Astroboy). The series was remade in the early 1980s and in 2003. Astro’s image still adorns bags, caps, t-shirts and anything else that remains still long enough for the print-bot to get at it. Now, of course, Astroboy has just been released as a computer-animated (CG) feature film, directed by David Bowers — a HK, US and Japan co-production with animation by Imagi.
Despite the 3-dimensional appearance of this film, there has been a live-action version that was even more genuinely 3-dimensional, if boasting very primitive SFX. This was in fact made four years before the famous anime series, airing on Fuji TV in 1959-1960. Masato Segawa starred as the robot-boy who fought against giant robots, space aliens, and other nasties.
Here is some clips from the show, plus a scene from the live-action Tetsujin 28-go TV series of the same period.
Also available is the opening ten minutes of a feature-length “compilation” movie, Fuhrer ZZZ, that was produced from the series. Note that the beginning moments utilise drawings from the manga.
If you get into the story, you can find the rest of the movie (8 parts in all) on YouTube. They can be found by the title “astro boy – fuhrer zzz 1/8″, “astro boy – fuhrer zzz 2/8″, “astro boy – fuhrer zzz 3/8″, etc.
Now, apparently, the 58 episodes of the live-action series are being released on DVD by Geneon Universal Entertainment in Japan. You can read about it here.
Two totally different robots face off in a beautfully rendered short CG film — World War by University Of Hertfordshire student Vincent Chai. Its semi-retro stylings and attention to detail are superb.
For more animation wonders, see Aniboom — the Animation Virtual Studio.
The Japanese giant robot Tetsujin 28 has had many incarnations. Created in manga form in 1956 (written and illustrated by Mitsuteru Yokoyama), it spawned several anime series, was renamed as “Gigantor” for US TV, appeared in a live-action movie and is being made into a full-length CGI feature film.
1960s TV Series (as “Gigantor”)
2004:
Tetsujin 28-go (Japan-2005; live action; dir. Shotaro Kaneda):
Upcoming T28 (CGI animated film):
But on top of that, it was announced some time ago that a full-size statue of Tetsujin 28 would be built in Kobe:
And just last month it was officially unveiled to the public in Wakamatsu Park in Kobe, Japan:
Reports have surfaced of an in-development military robot that will fuel itself by scavenging biomass from its environment. In other words, this “steam-powered robot” will be a forager — self-maintaining, able to “feed” off grass, wood and the biological detritus of war, including corpses. That’s quite a scenario — one that sounds like the makings of a sci-fi horror story. But according to FoxNews this is something that the Pentagon has contracted a Maryland company, Robotic Technology, Inc. to develop.
According to Robotic Technology Inc.’s official website, its Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot —or “EATR”
… can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.
Putting aside scenarios of ravenous robotic hordes re-enacting the cannibal zombie apocalypse across a war-torn landscape, the perceived advantages of this scheme are many:
In addition to missions requiring long-range, long-endurance ability, the EATR can provide direct support to combat units without requiring labor or materiel logistics support for refueling. EATR could forage for its own energy while the unit rested or remained in position. EATR, having a heavy-duty robotic arm and hybrid external combustion engine, could provide direct support to combat units by: carrying the unit’s backpacks and other material (the mule function); provide RSTA, weapons, support, casualty extraction, or transport; provide energy to recharge the unit’s batteries or directly power command and control centers.
No, this is not fiction….
In a similar though more domestic development, UK designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have developed flesh-eating furniture that chows down on flies and other household pests in order to help with the domestic duties:
Note: the image of the carnivorous war machine at the top of this articles aren’t what the real ones look like. Check out Warren Ellis’ site for the more mundane reality.
See the full battle in A Gentlemen’s Duel (US-2006; animation; short [7:46 min.]; dir. Sean McNally and Francisco Ruiz Velasco), now showing on Undead Backbrain.
