La Region Centrale by Michael Snow. In 1970, Snow put a robot on top of a mountain, and recorded what it saw. When Paul was describing this, I had pictured some kind of ambulatory robot, moving around and seeing things, but when I ran a search I found it was in a fixed location, and described less as a robot than as a "camera on a tripod".

«La Région Centrale» was made during five days of shooting on a deserted mountain top in North Quebec. During the shooting, the vertical and horizontal alignment as well as the tracking speed were all determined by the camera’s settings. Anchored to a tripod, the camera turned a complete 360 degrees, craned itself skyward, and circled in all directions. Because of the unconventional camera movement, the result was more than merely a film that documented the film location’s landscape. Surpassing that, this became a film expressing as its themes the cosmic relationships of space and time. Cataloged here were the raw images of a mountain existence, plunged (at that time) in its distance from civilization, embedded in cosmic cycles of light and darkness, warmth and cold.

The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead by Frank Tipler

The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler

Snake Robots. Paul said that the most beautiful robots being built today are based on the movements of snakes. I'd believe that.

Snap Circuits. Like an Erector set, or Lego Mindstorms, except 100 times cooler.