Robotic toys and gear are getting better every year! Need some gift ideas for that special robot geek in your life? We put together some favourite gift ideas, from stocking stuffers, amazing robot toys, and fingers-crossed wish list items. There’s something on this list for every budget! Don’t see what you’re looking for? Check out our gift list from last year and browse from our recommendations of 20 great books to hook kids and teens on robotics. Happy shopping!

Our first few submissions have now arrived! Have a holiday robot video of your own that you’d like to share? Send your submissions to editors@robohub.org.

Robohub President Sabine Hauert gave an insightful talk at TEDx Berlin about what we try and do here at Robohub: ensuring truthful, fair, balanced robotics information is being shared. As our loyal readers know, we provide a platform for connecting the robotics community to the world and help empower experts to become better communicators for their work. Why is that important? Simply put, we want to dehype how robotics can be portrayed.

In her talk, Sabine explains how robots can be game changers but not in the way you necessarily think.

That’s right! You better not run, you better not hide, you better watch out for brand new robot holiday videos on Robohub! Drop your submissions down our chimney at editors@robohub.org and share the spirit of the season, like these vids-of-Christmas-past

How can robotics help to enhance the development of the modern arts? Japan’s famous playwright, stage director Oriza Hirata and leading roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro launched the “Robot Theater Project” at Osaka University to explore the boundary between human-robot interactions through robot theater. Their work includes renditions of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”, Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, and their own play “I, Worker”. Their work has spread internationally to Paris, New York, Toronto and Taipei.

For this interview, we would like to invite their collaboration partner Yi-Wei Keng, director of Taipei Arts Festival, to share his insights on the intersection of robotics and the arts.

SOCIAL ROBOTICS JAPAN is adapted from a bimonthly column published in Japan’s Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun (日刊工業新聞/Business & Technology Daily Newspaper). The 101-year-old, nationally circulated newspaper is a co-organizer of the iREX International Robot Exhibition and its biennial alternate, Japan Robot Week. The column’s generalist, socio-technological perspective aims to encourage both domestic and international conversation around developments in Japanese robotics.

The OPLINE Prize is the first online contemporary art award, where the audience vote for the winner out of 10 nominated artists. The winning artist receives 4,000 Euros and exhibitions. The winner also gives away a work of art to a random voter. The OPLINE Prize process in itself reflects on innovative digital culture and the engagement of the broader community in art.

For a sci-fi fan like me, fascinated by the nature of human intelligence and the possibility of building life-like robots, it’s always interesting to find a new angle on these questions. As a re-imagining of the original 1970s science fiction film set in a cowboy-themed, hyper-real adult theme park populated by robots that look and act like people, Westworld does not disappoint.

The upcoming Robotic Online Short Film Festival (or ROS festival) is a science fiction short film festival planning to focus on robotics related themes. The deadline for submitting short films is November 20, with films on display from December.

UCL’s Interactive Architecture Lab has developed a new type of choreography – one that explores the potential for dialogue between humans and robots – and the way we might design cooperatively in the future. Fabricating Performance is the brainchild of Syuko Kato and Vincent Huyghe, bringing together their specialisms of dance and robotic systems.

Since April, a troupe of eight flying machines has been performing in a Cirque du Soleil Broadway show called Paramour. This group of quadcopters has now completed its first 100 shows in front of a live theater audience, without a single incident. Given the string of recent safety incidents with drones (there’s more), this begs the question: How was this accomplished?

The announcement that SoftBank will spend $32 billion to acquire ARM Holdings means the Japanese firm is buying the most important company in the world of mobile processors for smartphone and Internet of Things devices.

The team behind RoboThespian, a life-sized humanoid robot designed for human interaction in a public environment, have launched a new YouTube channel: Robot’s World. The robot is very much real and enjoys a bit of profanity in its first episode about the confusion between AI and robots.

The ICRA 2016 conference in Stockholm, Sweden, 16-21 May, is approaching! This year, the robotics community reflected on the strong and natural relationship between robots and rubber duckies. Vote for your favourite poem!

Most robots, when their creators are done with them, meet one of two fates. Either they’re stashed away, in some corner of a lab, closet or basement, or they’re cannibalized to make another robot. A robot part can cost tens of thousand of dollars, and some robotics researchers, who tend to be focused on the future, rather than the past, do not hesitate to eviscerate an old robot to create a new one.