Robot Trivia #2 - The answers and results

I just realized that I had forgotten to give a closing date for this round of Robot Trivia. (grin!) But I had been looking at the comments and it is quite clear that anybody who has anything to say has either said it or, well, won't ever!

So here are the answers to the trivia....

#13 -- Asimo, by Honda. This is the most articulate robot I've seen to date. He made a brief appearance about 2 years ago here at Midvalley Mega Mall. Did a simple dance and a bunch of other movements which other robots would have trouble managing. If any company has a chance at making real, useful and practical domestic robots, I'd put my money on Honda!




#14 -- Pris from Blade Runner. According to the movie, this is a 'military/pleasure' model. Hmm, dominatrix, anyone??!!



#15 -- QRIO by Sony. Pronounced 'Qu-rio' and short for "Quest for cuRIOsity". Too bad you won't see future models of him anymore as Sony has pulled the plug on his development. Bye bye QRIO, we'll miss ya!



#16 - C-3P0 and R2-D2 from the Star Wars saga. Did you know these 2 guys were inspired, in part by an Akira Kurosawa film titled Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958) (The Hidden Fortress)?



#17 - Sonny from iRobot. The first time I saw this movie, I was quite convincend this was the badguy.... at least for the 1st half of the movie! :)



#18 - Twiki, carrying on his chest Dr. Theopolis, Both from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.



#19 - Voltron: Defender of the Universe. Fans watch out, there's a Hollywood movie on this robot in the making!



#20 - Lance Bishop 341-B from Aliens. Prefers to call himself an 'artificial life form'. Was the executive officer on board the Colonial Marine vessel Sulaco.



#21 - EVA-01 from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Piloted by 14-year-old protagonist, Shinji Ikari. Wikipedia states this is "commonly regarded as one of the greatest anime of all time."



#22 - Sorry, that other guy from Lost in Space had already made his debut in Trivia #1. This bulbous fella is Robby, originally from the movie Forbidden Planet. And check this out, this 7-foot-two robot has actually made appearances in more than two dozen movies and TV shows!



#23 - RX-78-2 from the highly successful Gundam franchise. He was piloted by Ray Amuro, which, like the heroes in many robot stories, is a guy who 'happened to be there' at that time.




#24 - VF-1 Variable Fighter from the Macross universe. Piloted by Skull Squadron leader, Roy Fokker.

So here comes the part where I announce who's the super-geek for this round... and the winner is... a sort-of tie between STING (or Mr. Gundam) and Robotboy!! Both of them gave a bunch of really good answers, as you've seen yourselves, and deserves to win!

Thanks to all for participating... and to show of you who are non-fans of robots, thank you for your patience...

Next post... dangers lurking in your plastic bottles... learn to tell which are safe, which are not!

More robots (Part 2)

Hello there folks, the fun robot trivia is back!!

Hopefully this lineup is more fun for you ... lets see how many you can get right this time.... and then we can find out who's the ultimate robot geek! OK, OK, if you're not too proud of that title... then we'll just keep it low key, how about that? :)


HERE WE GO AGAIN....

#13 -- Its the first ever robot capable of running too!




#14 -- Way cool when she dipped her hand into the boiling water.....



#15 -- Harro! Too bad they've discontinued its development



#16 - No list is complete without these two blokes!!



#17 - Complete with extra dense alloy and independent processor



#18 - Bidibidibidibidi (anybody ever figured out what he is saying??)



#19 - "And I'll form the head!"



#20 - "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid"



#21 - If he fights Angels, does that make him the Devil?



#22 - You have to be really, um, grown up, to know this one!



#23 - The original model -- nothing fancy, but it works!




#24 - Wait till you see me fly! Hint - I talked about it in Part 1

So there you have it.... 2 dozen fine specimens of Robots!! Its quite a shame only 3 amongst the 24 are real. So start posting your comments, and see if you can name these remaining 12!

I'm quite sure I must have missed out some other note-worthy mechs. Oh ya, like the Mechwarriors or the kid from AI. Do let me know too, if there are others which you feel strongly about that was not included in this lineup.

Robot Trivia #1 - The answers and results

The 'contest' is over, finally! And wow, what a non-event. :(

(Alton, Mr Gundam, where art thou?)

Looks like either the robots I'd picked are way too obscure, or this subject is just not your cup of tea. I'm seriously wondering if I should go through with part 2!?!? That's meant to be slightly more challenging ... i.e. likely more obscure!

Anyway, a MILLION THANKS to those of you who participated. Hope it was fun for you. Unfortunately (or may be, fortunately), nobody was geek enough to get all of the questions right... but there were a few good attempts. I'll announce the 'winner' at the end of this post.

But in the mean time, for those of you who are dying to know just what or who those familiar-looking characters are, but can't quite place them, here they are again, in the same order...

#1 - Astroboy by Osamu Tezuka... came out as a comic (manga) in the 50's and then had his own cartoon series (anime) in the 60's... look out for the brand new CGI movie in theaters near you in the future.




#2 - B9 from the 60's SciFi TV series, Lost in Space.




#3 - Cylon Centurion from the 80'x TV series, Battlestar Gallactica. Remember, the constant pain in the rear for Starbuck (the pilot, not the coffee joint) and Apollo?




#4 - Commander Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series. He was the logic-driven advisor to Captain Picard as Spock was to Captain Kirk (original Star Trek TV series).




#5 - The Daleks, bad guys from arguably the most successfuly British sci-fi TV serial, Dr. Who. Its also *the* longest-running sci-fi TV serial in the world. Their favourite word: Exterminate!




#6 - ED-209, the highly-lethal but buggy law enforcement droid (i.e. 'ED') in Robocop. As dumb and as clumsy as they may be, you still won't want to mess with those 2 pairs of machine guns!




#7 - Aah... the Fembots from Austin Powers... I think these ladies pack both a pair of machine guns and flame-throwers! Gentlemen, you 'd want to be very careful with them!!




#8 - The Iron Giant, from the full-length movie of the same name. I didn't expect many to get it right... but if you love a good movie with 'soul', and don't mind feeling soppy at the end, this is the show, you *must* see this movie! The director is Brad Bird -- same guy who did the Incredibles and Ratatouille!!




#9 - Johnny-5 from Short Circuit, the military robot that achieve self-awareness when he got his circuits zapped by lightning. Doesn't Wall-E look similar to him?




#10 - An obscure robot from an equally obscure movie. This is Marvin, the clinically depressed and pathologically paranoid robot from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That movie was almost as brilliant as the original BBC radio series, but sadly didn't do well at the box office.




#11 - Mazinga-Z (マジンガーＺ）... or Tranzor Z to the North Americans. Created by Go Nagai, and had its fair share of popularity as both a manga and anime TV series in the 70's.




#12 - Megatron, in his original form from the first of many Transformers TV series. Leader of the Decepticons, the bad guys who always almost kick the butts of the softie good guys, the Autobots.

OKAY, so there you have it, all 12 of the robots, named and shamed! :)

And the WINNER IS ROBOTBOY (yay, yay, cheer!!!) He/she didn't get all of them right... but frankly, I think I liked some of the alternate names given as answers... bubblehead, LOL!


Should I still continue with Part 2 soon? Would the world care? Would it help achieve world peace and fight world hunger? Naah.... it would just be pointless but fun -- for me, at least!

I should probably get back to blogging about some useful tech in the mean time.... Cheers!

More robots (Part 1)

Tell you one specific thing about technology that I love -- robots! I have always been fascinated with them -- both real and fictional -- ever since I was a kid.

Yeah, grew up reading Mazinga-Z comic (rocket boosted fists, wow!), and later on, watching videos of Macross/Mospaeda (light years ahead of the Transformer franchise). Do you remember watching on RTM2 the Malay language dubbed Macross? "Bersedia untuk bertukar.... aaar, berdebar betul!! Eh, itu dia, Min Mei!"

I especially love robots with lasers and rockets shooting out of every nook and cranny (think: a fully decked-out battloid, or 'The Sumo'). There's something about opening up a full magazine and letting loose a couple dozen guided missles on some distant enemy. That spells.... G.E.E.K!


At the other extreme end, I also love the more whimsical robots like Doraemon (of course, back then he was just called by his Chinese translated name, 小叮当). He's a mechanical cat who's terrified of mice, sent back from the future to help his owner's loser of a great-great-great-great granddad. He pulls out all manner of inventions from his hyper-dimensional pouch (八宝袋) and almost always manages to save the boy's sorry behind.



Watching Wall-E brought back lots of fond memories of the robots of yesteryears and not too long ago... So I thought it would be fun to dedicate today's post to some of the robots of popular culture. Tell you what, lets have a simple contest, and see who is the first to name all the robots and where they are from.

Post your answers in the comment area... and I'll announce the WINNER in my next post!! The winner goes home with the bragging rights that he/she can out-geek people on robot trivia :)

So, its trivia time.... PART 1. Lets see how many you can get right... Post your answers in the comment section. I'll not publish your answers until this is over... then we'll see who knows their robots more! :)

HERE GOES.....

To get the ball rolling... here's ole Arnie....

#0 - Cyberdyne Systems Series 800/850 model 101 from the Terminator movies

#1 - Oh boy, you should know him right?




#2 - don't get lost looking for him




#3 - Mr hypnotic eyes himself




#4 - Here's looking at you, evil twin!




#5 - Who's that?




#6 - Lay down your weapons... or else!




#7 - Groovy, baby!




#8 - Seriously, you don't want to make him angry!




#9 - Need input....




#10 - Oh what's the point of this trivia!?




#11 - Talk to the fists




#12 - I liked it better as a big gun

Remember.... put in the name of the robot (character) and what movie/series or company is he/she/it from!

So post your answers.... and there'll be PART 2 coming up soon as well.