Look Japan, we know you love your robots but is it really prudent to equip them with frigging laser beams? Why not just hand them maps to our vital organs and special hoses to juice our babies? You're looking at an actual photo from the Blazer tournament held this week in Fukuoka City, Japan. The competition fitted Kondo's KHR-1HV with lasers and sensors and then let the teams battle it out in a mock-up city. We truly are the makers of our own doom.

Update: Video added after the break, pew pew... pew-pew, pew.

[Thanks, HolyMary]

With Sony's AIBO long pushing daisies, it's getting harder and harder to field a team in RoboCup's four-legged league. No longer: meet BJ, the dark lord successor to the Sony AIBO. Developed specifically for research and competition, the BJ from aXi stands 12.2-inches tall and features a Linux OS, ARM11 CPU, Kondo KRS-4013 robot servo, 64MB RAM / 16MB ROM, 350k pixel CMOS sensor, IR sensor, accelerometer, and 4x "meat sphere sensors" (as translated by Google) which should allow the wee bot to hone in on the jugular jewels of any unscrupulous referees. Due to hit North America and places beyond this Fall for about ¥600,000 or $4,853.

[Via Impress]

While Kondo's KHR-2HV robot is plenty capable as far as relatively inexpensive robot kits go, it isn't exactly much of a looker. Kondo doesn't appear to be quite ready to give up on the title of most eligible robot just yet though, with the company now releasing the A-621 GENEX suit to add a bit more style to our humble bucket of bolts. To show off his sporting side, Kondo's also supplying a series of decals of soccer uniforms (sold separately), which should also help him stand out at the next RoboCup. Look for the entire wardrobe to be available in Japan in the next few weeks, with the GENEX suit setting you back ¥18,000 ($152) and the soccer uniform sets running ¥1,260, or about ten bucks apiece.

We'll spare you the excruciating detail: KHR-1HV + hip-swivel = good times. Whereas KHR-1HV's predecessors, the KHR-1 and KHR-2HV had plenty of robo-kit goodness going for them, the KHR-1HV really takes things to a whole new level, allowing for a much closer approximation to human walk, specifically that whole "turning" thing us Homo sapiens are so fond of. You'll also be glad to know that the KHR-1HV has a beefier battery, for extended circular jaunts, and the kit assembly is hardly complicated by the fancy new hip servos. The shoulder servos have been beefed up as well, allowing for a 270 degree range of motion compared to the former 180 degrees, but the new motors combined with that new battery pack do make the bot a bit top-heavy. Still, the 1HV is all-in-all a pretty good upgrade to the Kondo lineup, and while current owners of the KHR-1 or 2HV don't necessarily need to drop everything right now and buy one, we know they'll be jealous all the same. Make sure to peep the read link for some action vids.

When we first spotted this mild Kondo update to its KHR-1 bot, we weren't too incredibly excited, but after watching a couple of TiVoed episodes of Dancing with the Stars -- you know, to get the creative juices flowing -- we realized the incredible destructive and will-bending capacity of a dancing robot, something the KHR-1 is particularly suited for with its fancy new pivoting hip joints. That's about all this new bot kit has going for it, so if your KHR-1 or KHR-2HV is fueling your passion for robotic world domination just fine, we don't seem much of a reason to spring the 126,000 yen (about $1,091 US) for a pair of Emmitt Smith-aping hips, but at least you've got the option now, yeah?

If you find you've "outgrown" your Lego Mindstorms kit (as if!), and are looking to get into the humanoid robot game without putting a second mortgage on your house or pursuing an advanced degree, Kondo just started shipping the KHR-2HV humanoid robot kit to us non-Japanese sods. Kondo's KHR-1 was all well and good, but the KHR-2HV includes more controls, gears and servos, along with improved software and looks. The 2HV can even manage back flips and cartwheels if you've got the technical chops to slap this thing together. Plus, at $1,199 (via Japanese importer AudioCubes) it's practically a steal, and we hear with these smaller models it's fairly unlikely they'll try to kidnap your spouse and children in an effort to grab power from municipal governments. Hopefully this means we have another MANOI on the way as well, since we can't say the 2HV looks quite as swell in the buff.

[Via I4U]

Having already blown our entire travel budget attending CES, E3, and various other important events in sunny locations, we weren't able to scrape together the funds to hit up this year's annual RoboGames festival in San Francisco, but luckily Make magazine/blog has filled in the void by providing some excellent coverage. Formerly known as the ROBOlympics, the event has grown to over 20 categories and demonstrations, covering some of the same territory we saw at the Eastern Canadian Robot Games -- such as sumo wrestling, fire-fighting, and line-following -- but also throwing in a little RoboCup-style soccer football, a new 3-on-3 hockey tournament, and even a trio of so called Tetsujin events in which otherwise unathletic individuals sport hydraulic mech suits which enable them to perform amazing feats of speed, strength, and dexterity. Besides sponsoring a display table among the likes of Lego and NASA, Make also has its Media Maker Bre Pettis filing daily videocasts and flickr photosets from the scene, featuring such Engadget faves as Vstone's Robovie-M, Kondo's KHR-1, and HiTec's Robonova as well as several other non-competitive models like Mark Sherman's snakebot and a rig that can play and seemingly defeat children at Connect Four. You can follow the links below to get a feel for all the action, and stay tuned to Make because Day 3 coverage is only starting to trickle in.

Read- RoboGames site
Read- Make @ RoboGames
Read- RoboGames Day 1
Read- RoboGames Day 2