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Hotshot robot enjoys insult comedy and stealing your girlfriend

A remote-controlled robot named Hotshot was spotted at the 2007 Coachella festival last weekend.

Donald Bell Senior Editor / How To
Donald Bell has spent more than five years as a CNET senior editor, reviewing everything from MP3 players to the first three generations of the Apple iPad. He currently devotes his time to producing How To content for CNET, as well as weekly episodes of CNET's Top 5 video series.
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Donald Bell
Photo of Hotshot the robot at the 2006 Coachella music festival.
Johnny 5 is alive! HotshotTheRobot.com

Attendees of this past weekend's Coachella music festival in Southern California spotted a robot named Hotshot who apparently roamed the fairgrounds making colorful robotic commentary. Falling somewhere between Short Circuit and Triumph the insult-comic dog, Hotshot seems to be a remote-controlled bot with a head-mounted camera and an off-site operator who provides the robot with its witty banter.

Hotshot begs an interesting and possibly terrifying question. Is it possible to engineer a robot that has a better chance of getting lucky than you do? Not some kind of super-realistic sexbot like Cherry 2000, but a Johnny 5-style robot that can woo the opposite sex just by pure charm and charisma. I'm beginning to think the impending robot takeover of the human race might have less to do with homicidal Terminators, and more to do with Pimpbot 5000.

Here's a clip from Hotshot's previous appearance at the 2006 Coachella festival:

Hotshot stealing your girlfriend:

More Hotshot videos are available here. Some great new photos of Hotshot by Xeni are up on BoingBoing and Flickr.