Issue Date: September 25, 2005

DVD INSIDER

Heavy mettle
A robotics engineer gives us nuts and bolts on the riveting "Robots."

The plot: Young robot Rodney (Ewan McGregor) heads to the big city to follow his dreams of becoming an inventor. He meets his idol, Bigweld (Mel Brooks), and joins forces with a ragtag band of machines to thwart a corporate takeover by the evil Ratchet (Greg Kinnear).

Insider's credentials: Matt Mason is the director of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Last year, he helped create the first origami-folding robot.

Overview: "I like robot movies, and I enjoyed this one. There's no question movies like this drive people toward our profession."

Scene 1: Rivet Town's Newest Arrival -- Viewers are introduced to a colorful world inhabited by robots.

"So often, movies depict robots that look like people, but there were some robots in the movie that did a great job of being different. Right at the beginning, there was a robot that looked like a big Slinky with this control module in its middle."

Scene 27: Get Up Offa That Thing -- Rodney shares a dance with girlfriend Cappy (Halle Berry).

"Robots that have ambitions and feel love, to me, is not a stretch. It may take a long while, but in principle, I don't see why it couldn't happen."

Extra feature: The Robot Arcade, "Robot Dance" -- Viewers can make a robot perform eight different dances.

"If you pick a certain capability and work on it with a robot, you can usually beat a human. We can certainly build machines that are faster or stronger. But a machine with the full range of human capabilities is way beyond us, and I don't mean just the intelligence. I mean the physical capabilities. Despite the strides we have made, robots aren't anywhere near the level that the smallest children are."
-- Reed Tucker

Robots will be out on DVD this Tuesday.