At 1:05 pm ET today, the Philadelphia Phillies will take the first step toward a future of human enslavement at the metal hands of our robot overlords. Engineers from the University of Pennsylvania constructed a one-armed robot that can pitch a baseball, and it will throw out the first pitch at today’s matchup between the Phillies and the Milwaukee Brewers. And after that ceremonial pitch? You guessed it – humans being used as batteries.

PhillieBot is made out of a recycled Segue, with a pneumatic cylinder added. The robot’s computer brain can adjust the pitch velocity and trajectory. Its fastball can hardly be described as killer: The Philadelphia Inquirer reports a practice pitch appeared to be going no more than 40 miles per hour. The Phillies say that’s on purpose, as a safety precaution. (Via Today’s THV)

Only 40 mph? That’s not so bad. It’s like fighting off an army of Tim Wakefields. Someone get Aaron Boone on the phone. Tell him his country needs him.

Australia must be a very lonely place, seeing as structural engineer Kris Tressider decided to build a real robot to fight. Jeez, Kris. I would think wearing a pink shirt into a bar in rural Tasmania would get you all the fights you’d be looking for.

But this is great, aside from the fact that the robot doesn’t have any legs or can’t hit only white people with money. Ever notice how none of these people doing great things with robotics are ever Americans? Oh, we had a fridge that shoots beer out of a cannon. Great. Call me when that fridge is able to drive me back to the bar.

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The human body is a miracle, and if you don’t agree I’ll beat you senseless in the street until you do. So it’s easy to take for granted how the human brain can balance the body to make it stand erect, or how it subconsciously braces itself for impact during a fall. Do you have involuntary reflexes, robot? Didn’t think so. From New Scientist:

Javier Ruiz-del-Solar of the University of Chile in Santiago and his team are training two teams of soccerbots for the annual world RoboCup. The aim of the RoboCup project is to have a robotic team in place by 2050 that can beat the best human side – an impossible goal unless soccerbots can learn to fall over without damaging themselves.

I don’t believe this; they’re teaching robots how to take dives. What kind of hotel is this? After they’ve mastered the physics of the fall, the next step will be to program robots to actually watch soccer without flipping into hibernation from the boredom. Eh, I actually like some soccer. But robots these days, all they wanna do is fiddle with their iPhones and watch MMA. They can do whatever they please as long as they stay off my lawn.

I don’t always appreciate descriptions like “Robots Playing Soccer” when clearly they’re just executing a penalty kick, one that takes nearly 3-1/2 minutes to set up. Would the penalty, by chance, have been Delay Of Game? Because Robot Soccer will be clamoring for that rule on the books if it isn’t already there. And would robotic soccer players have arms? That would just seem pointless to me, except for shoving robot officials and making gestures in Fortran. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

Enjoy a retrospective of sport-loving robots after the jump.
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Everyone has hated the stupid FOX Sports robot — “Cleatus” — ever since it debuted, and FOX doesn’t get abused for it the way they should. Cleatus has absolutely nothing to do with football, he’s completely irrelevant and the opposite of charming, and from what I can tell he exists primarily so FOX can sell some toys.  So Conan O’Brien came up with the idea of Cleatus doing things like humping Pam Oliver and making out with another robot.  It’s not quite as awesome as Cleatus murdering and raping the FOX studio crew, but hey, it’s network television.  They can only do so much.

For the record, Conan should have shivved Jay Leno and taken over The Tonight Show years ago so I could actually be awake when he does stuff like this.  And also because who doesn’t want to see Jay Leno shivved?

(This clip was first noticed by Awful Announcing, but NBC keeps being a bitch and pulling it from YouTube, so it took a while to get it together here)

In its continuing effort to show the rest of the world how great China is — and not at all dictatorial, nope, hahaha… ARREST THAT MAN!!! — new Chinese technologies will be used all over the Olympic Games this summer.  For example, Beijing will briefly halt the operation of all the factories that give the city just about the worst air quality in the world and power the Olympic Village with solar power.  Because they totally care about the environment!

I'm concerned about something more sinister, however.  Remember the new Olympic mascots?  They'll be there… in robot form.

Last but not least are the Fuwa robots. Developed by the Chinese Academy of Science, these robots can communicate with tourists in different languages.

Oh no you don't, China.  I won't stand for this.  There's only one way to properly enjoy a mascot, and that's by stuffing a disgruntled employee inside a creepy furry suit.  I mean, sure, it's possible that the robots will be nice — just like it's possible that AIDS won't kill you.  I'm just saying, disgruntled employees in furry suits aren't going to use an international sporting event to take over the world and turn us all into slaves.

[Fan IQ]