Drawing faces is hard; and as children suckled at the teat of MTV we posses neither the patience nor the discipline required to learn the skill. So imagine our surprise to discover the Self-Portrait Machine, a device that snaps your photo and then forces you to draw your own face by dragging your bound hands around until the portrait is complete. Jen Hui Liao's project is the result of an observation that "our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship." So it's like art and the intersection of philosophy... only it's not -- it's just a robot too lazy to make the portrait itself. See the video after the break.

It's not enough that humans gave robots a place to congregate to plan our demise, now we've adapted them with the ability to extract fuel from the very nectar of life. All that innocent experimentation with fuel cells that run on blood has led to this, a flesh-eating clock. This prototype time-piece from UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau traps insects on flypaper stretched across its roller system before depositing them into a vat of bacteria. The ensuing chemical reaction, or "digestion," is transformed into power that keeps the rollers rollin' and the LCD clock ablaze. The pair offers an alternative design fueled by mice, another contraption whose robotic arm plucks insect-fuel from spider webs with the help of a video camera, and a lamp powered by insects lured to their deaths with ultraviolet LEDs. Man, this is so wrong it has to be right.

[Via Hack a Day, thanks Isaac]

Step aside, Wall-E: Buzz Lightyear, courtesy of Thinkway Toys, has arrived to claim his rightful place at the top of the robot-based-on-Disney-character heap. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but Buzz's facial animation, sexy moves and trademark catch-phrases have all been wrapped up into a nice little bow here to rake in the cash when Toy Story and Toy Story 2 hit theaters this October as a 3D glasses double feature. Buzz responds to a few voice commands, can play a laser tag with the included remote, has a "Puppeteering Programming" mode to pose him for your own animations, and can even suffer an identity crisis when you tell him that he's just a toy. He'll be available this fall for $130-ish, check out a video after the break.

Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

Previously on Movie Gadget Friday, we tapped into the near dystopian future of fear in Brazil. Keeping on that 1980's near-future vibe (but with a slightly more sentient twist), this week we check out Michael Crichton's Runaway, starring Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons, Cynthia Rhodes and Kirstie Alley. Filled with circuitry and hardwired chips, the movie reinforces wholesome family values by featuring warranty voids as the gateway hack to murder.


Leaping Insect Robot

Measuring in around the size of a human head, these six-legged, spider-like, autonomous robots are mechanical in movement but shockingly precise in killing prey. The autonomous insects have the ability to propel themselves up to seven feet in the air, allowing for attacks on unsuspecting victims. Dual-functioning, the legs are able to crawl and grasp a multitude of surfaces, albeit awkwardly and rather slowly. After programming targets into a mainframe, the robots are able to identify and kill victims by injecting them with acid via a probe before short circuiting and eventually exploding into a ball of flames. Sadly, the robots lack any sort of remote control, making human errors in target-programming unable to be edited.

If you're squeamish about eating sushi then we doubt this is going to help. Chef Robot, on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo, is really just FANUC's M-430iA sanitary food and pharmaceutical robot with a fleshy appendage -- guess the rest of the human is right there on the serving tray. Soylent Green is people!

[Via TokyoMango]

It's kind of strange, really, how we can see just how near the end is, yet these so-called geniuses employed within the realm of academia are totally oblivious to their own evil deeds. Take cognitive science professor John Long, for instance, who is currently conducting a Preyro robot experiment in a Vassar College lab that intends to "allow robots to mimic animals far better than before." To him, he's just hoping to study evolutionary patterns in order to better understand how certain tweaks to things like fins and tails affect performance in the place we call reality. Though, there's a very real possibility that this research could accelerate the impending robot apocalypse by at least a score. Oh, what we'd give to be incognizant of the truth.

Not wanting the Allspark to beat them to the punch, the gang at thinkingbricks has given life to an Apple G4 Cube, complete with LEGO Mindstorms NXT-borne retractable wheels, a Bluetooth controller, automation via sensors, and a creepy red LED. That transparent base really makes the wheel deployment much more dramatic, a nice touch if we do say so ourselves. There aren't any step-by-step instructions, but there should be plenty of information at the page if you're thiking of making your own as a weekend project. Either way, be sure to check it out on video, located after the break.