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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This is a "Solar seeking botanical augmentation", to quote the Play Coalition, who are building the thing. It's basically a plantpot on legs which has a light sensor and moves around your room in order to find the best, brightest spot.

I don't know about you, but I'd find it intensely creepy. Especially if I popped downstairs in the middle of the night to get a snack and found my plant waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, just staring at me...

The Play Coalition (via CrunchGear)

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There's a theory that says that when a society develops artificial intelligence, it's only a matter of time until machines develop a better version of themselves, destroy humanity, and the planet becomes devoid of life and contains only a computer humming away to itself. I think this theory was posited by The Matrix.

We've just got another step closer to that day. Some AI software written by just one man has got within 5% of a passing grade for the Turing Test.

According to some scientist, humans have stopped evolving. This means we're not going to get any better - at least not naturally.

So I propose science steps in to make us better, seeing as Mother Nature can't be bothered any more. Here's how. These are the evolutionary steps scientists need to introduce to our gene pool ASAP.

1. SIDE EYES Seeing as our ears are always in use listening to MP3s of 1980s cover versions, it's hard to hear cars, bicycles and lorries coming toward you. I therefore suggest moving our eyes to the sides of our heads, like horses, so we're less likely to step out in front of buses because we can't hear them coming. You never hear about horses getting run over because they're too busy listening to the new Oasis album to listen out for cars, do you?

2. WIDER EAR CANALS Dunno about you, but my ear holes are never big enough to accommodate all these so-called "in ear" earphones. You know, the ones you're supposed to ram right in. I ram them in so hard it hurts and my brain pops, yet they still fall out after three minutes when the cable snags on my shirt. I therefore suggest scientists develop wider ear holes for better audio clarity and comfort "on the go."

The trouble with scientists is that they're too obsessed with numbers and efficiency and functionality - its why all of the robots that have been invented so far don't quite live up to what we've come to expect from science fiction. Sure, those robot arms that build cars are probably quite useful, but they don't really look the part. That's why you need artists. Artists like Nemo Gould.

This is Deep Green. Deep Green plays pool to above amateur level and it's training up to make sure you never get a look in at your local pub table.

Developed by a team of Queen's University egg-heads to play the round ball game, Deep Green is a gantry robot, mounted to the ceiling above the table, which uses a Global Vision System and a set of guide lights to figure out where all the balls are at any one moment and how to play each shot.

Jurassic Park was a good idea. Not the 'meddling with genetics', 'playing God', and 'being eaten alive bit' - but the bit where the Dinosaurs come back to Earth to be used for our amusement. That is a really really good idea.

Which is why i really like this fantastic toy by Hasbro.

Called 'Kota the Triceratops Dinosaur' this terrible lizard is part of the Playskool range aimed at kiddies up to 3-4 years old. Now, up until seeing this, I thought Playskool made simple toys like Sticklebricks and bath-time toys like that turtle with the worried look upon it's face.. Well, I guess simple toys just aren't good enough for 'Playskool'ers anymore, because Kota the Triceratops is anything but simple.

This is a robotic life-sized baby dinosaur. It walks, it squawks, it carries you around on it's back. Talk to Kota and the thing responds by roaring, stomping it's feet, or wiggling it's tail. It has independent head, eye, mouth and horn movements. In fact, this animatronic dino wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Jurassic Park. Okay, it would. It really would, but you get the idea. This is one highly advanced toddler toy.

Technically, this is a "wood carving duplicator" but the description "guitar photocopier" seems to fit the automated drilling machine so much better.

"A guide pin follows the contour of the original while a carbide bit does the cutting," says the listing, creating a precise wooden recreation of your original once it's finished. It's so precise it leaves the newly created version only requiring a bit of sanding and painting before it gets stuck on eBay for £49,000 as an original once used by Jimi Hendrix.

Everyone loves a robot. Especially a sensitive robot. Just look at WALL-E or Johnny-5. When it comes to a robot who has the capacity to feel, we all go a bit gooey inside. The cold, unfeeling, emotionless robot is a metaphor for that fear we have of losing what it is to be human.

Okay, so i'm playing loose with the double-meanings behind the word 'feel' and 'sensitive', because we're not talking emotional robots, or robots with 'feelings' but rather robots which can feel. Like in objects, and surroundings. LIke we can, physically.

Yes, some rather smug looking Japanese researchers/scientists/tech-bods have stumbled upon the perfect answer to the problem of making Robots completely sensitive to their environment. Be it cold, hot, hard, or soft. The skin they've developed looks like tin foil, gold tin foil like the stuff they wrap around marathon runners at the end of the race. Space Blankets i think they're called. Anyway, it looks like that, but it's not. It's a fine rubbery material that has hundreds and thousands of tiny carbon particles inside which allow conductivity of electricity. The skin can be stretched to 2.3 times it's normal size, allowing it to bend around a robot's metal frame and move with joints like a glove.

Not that many robotic fish come our way at Tech Digest, but this one's pretty awesome. It's a kit which simulates the experience of sitting for hours on end by a river getting cold and hungry, all in the comfort of your own home.

The kit consists of a fish, a rod and a lure. You chuck the 22.5cm-long fish (which looks vaguely like a bass, if bass were made of plastic) in your bathtub and it swims around happily - even avoiding you if you start floundering around too much. The fish apparently even moves its lips just like a real fish. It's not really my plaice to say whether that's true or not - I've never studied a fish's lips too closely.

Scientists at the University of Reading have got a step closer to creating Cybermen - human brains inside a robot - after putting together a small robot that uses rat neurones to control itself.

The scientists have managed to grow around 300,000 rat neurones artificially in the lab by starting off with the brain of a rat foetus. These neurones have gone on to make connections with each other and work in much the same way a regular rat brain does, using electrical impulses to make the brain "do stuff". The neurons are connected to a regular microchip, where they can be stimulated and the results analysed to see what happens. For example, they've built a robot on wheels with an ultrasound sensor, to spot when it is approaching a wall. I guess it's like giving a rat the Bat-power of echo-location. Maybe.

Do you ever find yourself staring forlornly at the Ping Pong table in your garage at 3am, wanting to bat a table tennis ball about but feeling that it might be a bit antisocial to wake up your neighbor for a quick knockabout? It's your lucky day. Robopong is a robot that'll fire up to 200 table tennis balls at you.

It's heavily configurable - you can adjust the angle, speed and frequency of the barrage, and it comes with a remote control that lets you adjust these variables from the comfort of your side of the table. This isn't just a toy either - Yiyong Fan (the #2 table tennis player in the US) uses machines built by the same company in his practice sessions.