Robot Sightings: Dishwashing robots, great Mech art, RoboTrace. and more…

What's going on today in my crazy robot world?

22:36 Androgenoid Jules ability to match facial expresions has captured attention all over the world. tinyurl.com/Androgenoid-Jules
22:47 The TOMY i-SOBOT awarded "Robot of the Year for 2008" by the Japanese government: tinyurl.com/isobot-japan-robot-of-the-year
22:51 ZMP and Tokyo Metropolitan University team up to fuse web intelligence and music delivery robots tinyurl.com/zmp-music-robot
22:57 Panasonic and University of Tokyo use robotics to load dishes in the dishwasher (tinyurl.com/dishwashing-robot) I missed the point...
23:06 KISS Institute for Practical Robotics announced the inaugural youth Botball Advisory Council (tinyurl.com/botball-council).
23:12 We poked around a bit and found a better report on why the dishwashing robot might make sense: tinyurl.com/dishwashing-robot-redux
23:16 The annual RoboTrace robot competition was held last month at Tsukuba (tinyurl.com/robotrace-robot-report)
23:26 Nothing to do directly with robots, but we thought you might be curious about Christmas here in Japan tinyurl.com/christmas-in-japan
00:48 Pink Tentacle uncovered a treasure trove of great Mech and Robot artwork on Pixiv (tinyurl.com/robot-mech-art)
00:52 Sugiura-san has 6+ years of ROBO-ONE experience. Dynamizer is offering services to other builders tinyurl.com/dynamizer-robotworks
01:09 Droidworks puts the KTX Gladiator humanoid robot through its paces (tinyurl.com/droidworks-ktx-robot). Looks pretty cool, though $$$.
08:29 British Scientist worried about robot nannies (tinyurl.com/babysitter-robots) but doesn't mention the biggest nanny of all - TV
08:36 With the Big 3 tanking it may be really bad timing, but Asimo going to lead the 2009 Rose Parade tinyurl.com/asimo-leads-rose-parade.
10:57 Iwaki-san's (Robot Force) Transformer robot video breaks 1,000,000 views and keeps going strong (tinyurl.com/transformer-robot)