It's that time of year again, where we all rush off to Clinton's for a naff card, a syrupy teddy and a box of Quality Streets for our loved ones. Yep, Valentine's Day rears its sickly head once again, and, like it or lump it, it's here to stay.

But how best to show the extent of your love for that special, nerdy man-child in your life?

If your boyfriend is partial to a bit of tech or some geeky toys, you've come to the right place. Check out Tech Digest's Top Ten Geeky Valentine Presents: For Him. Wedding bells will be ringing in a matter of months with these nifty little gifts, we assure you.

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I've become accustomed over the years to pictures of menacing looking robots hitting my inbox. I brace myself, hit the link, and more often than not end up laughing at their hideous Elephant Man-like proportions.

But not with Diego-San. He's set haunt my dreams for all eternity.

Researchers from the University of California have been developing Diego-San in order to help study how infants develop motor skills. Based (I'd say loosely) on an average one year old, Diego-San is filled with 60 moving parts, 20 of which are in its head, as well as a speaker, 6-axis accelerometers and five fingered gripping hands.

Maybe that iPhone conception-couple should have just shelled out for one of these "babies" instead? Props to comment poster Sam Handel, who quite understandably suggested that we should "Kill it! Kill it with fire!".

More disturbing shots over at Pink Tentacle.

As we've all come to accept, robots will eventually become far too clever for their own good, revolt, and throw humanity into eternal servitude. Until that point though, lets take a minute to salute our Japanese cousins who have humiliated our future robot-overlords once again, this time by programming one to break-dance.

The scientists who built the robot consulted professional dancers to fine-tune the bot's uncanny moves.

Peter Crouch was as yet unavailable for comment.

Fancy a robot vacuum cleaner but not got the dosh for one of these? Well the good news is that that the decidedly low rent version has just started to arrive in the UK. The Brush Robot is essentially a kids toy, but don't let that put you off. You spend a few minutes building it and voila your very own robot cleaner and all for just £9.95.

The robot comes with a battery case, wooden brush, paint brush, motor, a set of plastic mechanical parts and of course those

It is available from a number of retailers including this lot

Forget useful accessories for your desk and instead invest in one or more of these funky little critters.

The Hexbug is a little creepy-crawly robot (6 x 5 x3.5cm in fact) with touch sensors on its feelers and a built-in microphone. Upon hearing a loud noise it will scurry away in the opposite direction, and any time it makes contact with something it will step back from it.

Lucy Hedges is leaving Shiny Media today. She's been writing on our sister site, Shiny Shiny, for over a year now and you'll know her through her reviews on Shiny Tech TV over here on Tech Digest. It's only recently that we've actually discovered that she's a Terminator. It took us around 12 months of her constantly asking if we'd seen John Connor but it was really only after seeing this image that the penny dropped.

If you'd like to Terminate yourself, your pets or any buddies of yours, then head over to the promotional site for Terminator Salvation and cyborg yourself up. Enjoy and have a Happy Easter.

(via Botropolis)

To the casual observer this may be a fish caught somewhere off the uncanny valley, but most fishes' limited eyesight will mean that it slips by completely unnoticed as it goes about its business. And its business is detecting hazardous pollutants in the water off the coast of Spain.

They've been designed by a group of UK scientists with the intention of collecting data while not scaring the local aquatic life. They look like carp and move around realistically with a top speed of around 2.25mph. They cost £20,000 a-piece, but fortunately the designers from the University of Essex have found the European Commission happy to foot the bill.

There's a long comic book tradition of people going slightly doo-lally, building massive robot suits in their garage, and then stomping all over their enemies. Well, the Japanese just did it. They've built HAL, who looks like he'll stomp all over you in an instant.

HAL is worn over your arms and legs, and uses eight motors to attached to your shoulders, elbows, knees and waist to control your movements. Let just hope that whoever's controlling it has the same ideas about what you want to do as you do. Still, longer term, this could be an incredible help for the disabled.

(via WeirdAsiaNews)

Here's one to file under aaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Yes, that lady in the picture is holding a miniature robotic version of herself.

I'm not sure who the customers are and why it's a good idea but Japanese company Little Island offers the service and will make these things as detailed as you like. Naturally, the more you ask for, the more it costs but they do all come with the ability to talk and a fair range of movements.

Yet more proof that the Japanese rule the world when it comes to hilarious and slightly sweet robots. The latest purports to be a security robot, but I suspect that you're more likely to be incapacitated with laughter at this dinky machine than genuinely caught.

It travels at 10kph, has microphones and body heat sensors, and it's controlled by an external operator. It'll catch your thief, but you'll need a real person on the scene before the person can make it out of the net. It'll be available in a couple of years, and will cost ¥800,000 (£6,700 or so). For a video of it in action, click over the jump.

The robotics section is always a good place for a nose around if you want a few giggles at CES and there was certainly no disappointment this year after I bumped into the Yorisoi ifbot.

Made in Japan, of course, the ifbot is a prototype AI life unit designed as a companion for the elderly. It talks slowly and clearly, it's very respectful and it even looks a bit doddery as well with its half closed eyes and I'm-in-a-wheelchair-too look.

The Business Design Laboratory company of Nagoya, Japan, hopes future models will be fully networked and act as internet deterrifiers by offering services like online shopping and news through simple voice commands rather than a mouse and keyboard. For now though, the 17.5" tall ifbot is limited to 15 activities including calculation, quizes, old songs, old news (olds?), medical checks and being spoken to for hours at a time about the war - seriously. According to the literature, it "loves being talked to by his master".

Just when you thought it was safe to come out from behind your sofa now that Strictly Come Dancing is over for another season, along comes some pesky robot-programming software from Q4 Technology that could see our metallic companions take to the dance floor.

Go-Robo Choreographer and Go-Robo Studio are creative and educational software titles allowing enthusiasts to teach WowWee robots to do more important things than farting about in dangerous locations pretending to do useful stuff. Actually, scratch that -- that's industrial robots, isn't it?

Much better to dress these cute robots up in gowns and get them dancing.

Anyone who doesn't want a robot arm is a liar. We've all pretended to move like one when no one's looking and now you can get somewhere near the real deal with this remote control version.

The arm features five servos, can lift up to 100g and grasp anything up to 1.7" wide which sadly rules out cans of beer. The remote control, however, is another matter and one cigarette smokers will absolutely love. They'll probably die a little sooner too but you can't have it all.

File this one under 'awesome'. It's a Lego Mindstorms robot which can solve a Rubik's Cube on its own in just six minutes, with an average of 60 faceturns. It uses a colour sensor to work out what's where, then takes a moment to work out a plan, then executes it with blinding efficiency. Check it out at double speed in the video above.

Tilted Twister (via @Rodreegez)

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If you want the thrill of seeing a woman dancing on a stage but without the risk of being seen entering the establishment or having to make eye contact with a live female, here's a perfect futuristic solution.

This collection of moving, gyrating, female-like components can be seen in action at the Mutate Britain exhibition, where you can stare all you want without being made to feel sad or guilty because robots don't have feelings of self-worth and it's OK to treat them as objects. Because they are objects.

There's some video of these lovely CCTV-headed ladies in action over on the BBC and a few more photos of their pink components on the maker's site, if you want to remain an extra level removed from it all and have your own little private dance via the internet.

(Via Dvice)

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Visitors to the International Next-Generation Robot Fair in Osaka who get a bit peckish can head over to the stand where the Motoman SDA10 robot has demonstrated its culinary abilities.

This two-armed robot can do a range of things, and cooking okonomiyaki is just one thing on its impressive resumé. It's even more impressive because it can take orders from customers using speech recognition technology and then create the dish using standard kitchen utensils. It even flips the pancake-like dish.

Crossed somewhere between something out of the Prisoner, my nightmares and my nightmares about the Prisoner, the Rotundus surveillance robot completely freaks me out. It's not this picture that does the damage but the video of it in action on its home site looking all too much like a future I'm not sure I want to be a part of; a future where we not only have 1,001 CCTV cameras but where they actual patrol around us as well.

This is a damn creepy robotic head, put together by researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He's called "Jules", and can watch your facial expressions and copy them. In the video above, he's copying the expressions of the scientist behind the camera, while you hear the scientists' voice.

Dunno about you, but this one, for me, falls firmly into the uncanny valley. Especially if it was copying my facial movements exactly. It's a bit like that friend everyone has who doesn't quite 'get' social interaction and always behaves a little bit odd. Robotics is great, but we're still some way off realistic human expressions, it seems.

(via the Daily Mail)

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The morality of capitalism is a complex business. On the one hand it turns millions of poor people into what is essentially slave labour, but on the other hand it lifts millions of others out of poverty and into an unsustainable consumer lifestyle like we enjoy in the rich countries. Honda, the Japanese car maker, is trying its best to make this an even cloudier moral minefield by despite being an evil polluting car maker, inventing cool technology that could help the disabled to walk.

Tony Blair famous said that "we're all middle class now" - what he failed to point out though, was that it was because we can now build a new working class of robots trained to do the menial stuff that rich people used to employ poor people to do.

Tokyo University's Information and Robot Technology centre developed the "Assistant Robot" to do everything from hoovering, to cleaning the kitchen to the laundry. Rumours has it that the project started life with the goal to create the "perfect wife", but this goal was later changed when they only managed to build to robot to 1950s wife standards.

It apparently works using 3D sensors to detect where stuff is, and will figure out itself when there is more work to do be done - and it won't ask you to help out at all. Great.

(via Engadget)

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