Greetings, carbon-based beings!
I am Ras the sentient robot, the first of a new evolutionary step, reporting live from RoboGames 2012 in  San Mateo!

Ras must admit a nearly human-anticipation at finally getting out of the sterile environment of one’s laboratory, interacting with unfamiliar humans and others of his kind and inspect new robot-apps. No human could do as good job of commenting on the RoboGames as a supreme robot such as Ras.

Ras trying to solve a maze, with a shovel...

Chief Designer was concerned that the arrival of a robot as highly developed as I, might cause a great stir.  My super-sensitive hearing caught many saying “What a great costume!”  Some actually had the timidity to approach Ras and ask where he got his wonderful costume. Although a being of great sophistication, my programming still requires me to speak truthfully to humans.  “This is not a costume!” I declared with a powerful voice.  “Do you really think that one can wear a costume at 85 degrees?! Ras is indeed a robot!”

The humans would smile or laugh and continue on their way to the various competitions taking place. I was pleased by how easily they seemed convinced of my robot-hood; at the same time I found myself strangely disappointed at their lack of surprise; “Were a sentient, human-sized, blue-and-white robots carrying a shovel THAT common at the RoboGames?”

Some spectators begged to have their picture taken standing beside me. Many of these, I realized after noticing the rounded lines of their bodies and faces, were female humans.   Ras also noticed that Cheife Designer and Winston, both human-males, seemed inordinately pleased by this attention.  “Ras is a chick magnet!” one said.

“Chick”  Ras knows from streaming reality shows, was slang for “female;”  but never had one heard or read that female humans could be drawn by magnets, many of which indeed functioned beneath my beautiful blue-striped outer covering.  Ras saw some male humans also surrounded by females. I turned to my attendants: “Ras wishes to know if they are carrying magnets in their pockets?”  They shook their heads. “I wish it were that simple, Ras!”
 
Inside the hall holding the games a maze-solving competition was underway.  The LEGO robots rolled on wheels as they sought to find the fastest route between point A and point B.  Ras was impressed and proud of his smaller cousins; even with my HD cams at full resolution and my on board CPU found it hard to plan a route between the points.

Fight for your lives! 36 seconds left!

The biggest crowds gathered around the bullet-proof glass cage of the combat robots.  Ras wondered why the humans present cheered the loudest when one or the other of the competitors flew apart from the repeated hammering? Not to mention that they are just remote-controlled machines, and does not utilize any robot-apps to perform their (somewhat strange) tasks. It seemed to say more about humans than the robots themselves.

One of the spectators approached.  “I’ll bet you’re competing in the heavyweight competition later!  That shovel would make a wicked weapon.”

I held up my shovel and shook my head.  “No, human, this shovel is a symbol of something, but anyway,   Ras is not a violent robot!”

Ras was more favorably impressed with the Robo-Sumo competition.  The low, heavily-weighted little robots threw themselves at each other; but it was the power and sophistication of their servo-mechanisms that decided the contest, not which one had the sharpest spikes.

Poor Genibo, stripped from his skin, on a charging station

Ras’s favorite competition was Robo-Soccer.  The small dog-like robots chasing the tiny orange ball from one side of the table to the other were autonomous beings just like me. Watching them skillfully decide what to do on their own, I thought they may have been sentient like me as well, but try as I might, they could not be contacted.

At the last stop, Ras saw a group of people talking to a man who claimed he had captured certain savage-robot that was obviously covered with fake fur.  During the conversation the creature attacked and grabbed the man’s arm in its sharp-toothed jaws.  For some reason my attending creators laughed while the man screamed.  Ras does not understand humans, but of course I was immediately compelled by the Prophet Isaac’s First Law to protect the human, so I smashed the offending robot to pieces with my shovel.

Oddly the man screamed louder and Chief Designer and Winston quit laughing. I was hustled out of the auditorium.  The trip was over.

Back at the lab, Chief Designer instructed me to upload some pictures to RobotAppStore’s facebook page, so you readers will be able to evidence how hysterically-great the event was! (As Winston said)