When Laura Cressman married her husband in 2012, she added an unconventional guest to her wedding party: the Dragon Runner, a small, unmanned military robot designed for urban combat. As "Mr. Roboto" played in the background, the Dragon Runner rolled down the aisle, controlled sight unseen by one of Cressman's friends.
"The reaction was amazing," Cressman told Mashable in an email. "My favorite comment of the night was from my best friend Jeff: 'It really hit me how bad a dancer I was when the bomb disposal robot kept better rhythm on the dance floor than I did.'"
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Cressman, née Wong, a mechanical engineer with the defense technology developer Qinetiq, helped design the Dragon Runner's robotic arm and was able to borrow the bot from her office. On her wedding day, it served as the couple's ring bearer, complete with miniature dress shirt and tuxedo vest.
"It is more likely to be found in the battlefield removing bombs," Cressman's father, Bill Wong, wrote on ElectronicDesign.com.

The Dragon Runner, a military robot, acted as the ring bearer at Laura Cressman's wedding.
Image: Jay Park, courtesy of Laura Cressman
The Cressmans were not the first couple to sanctify their union under the watchful gaze of an automaton. In 2007, a bumblebee-yellow robot named "Tiro" acted as the master of ceremonies for a South Korean couple, introducing the newlyweds to the crowd in a male voice with a smile on his dark, glassy face.
At the time, Tiro was valued at 200 million won, or roughly $189,000.
Three years later, a Japanese couple was married by the "I-Fairy," a four-foot-tall robot with luminescent eyes and plastic pigtails crowned by a wreath of flowers. During the ceremony, the I-Fairy — which costs about 6.3 million yen, or $6,100 — turned to the groom and said, "Please lift the bride's veil." Later, she extended both arms for the bride and groom to grasp her hands.
Japanese manufacturing has always been at the cutting edge, introducing automation into service industries from dining to transportation and inspiring hobbyists to construct robots that perform impressive feats. So it's not surprising that Japan would pull ahead in developing humanoid robots like the I-Fairy, or Kirobo, a talking robot that was launched into space over summer 2013.
The United States has made strides of its own with robotic innovations, such as Amazon's delivery drones and the military's machine-gun firing robot. For now, though, wedding bots don't seem to rank high on Amazon or Google's to-do list. When it comes to technology, Pinterest, planning apps, photo booths and 3D-printed accessories already address nearly every nuptial necessity that isn't robot-shaped.
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American wedding robots are mostly DIY affairs. In July 2013, Minnesota-based tinkerer Jon Schmig launched a Kickstarter campaign for the WeddingBot, a remote-controlled robot that can perform various roles, including officiant, ring bearer, flower girl and videographer.
"I think having a robot in a wedding is an amazing idea," Schmig wrote on the campaign page. "It's too late for my wedding, but I think other people will be interested."
The Kickstarter reached its modest $700 funding goal, and during the production process Schmig gave his robot the name Oscar.

Oscar is roughly two feet tall and weighs eight pounds. Behind his cheerful visage, which looks like a young child's drawing of a robot, he packs a technological punch. His "brain" is an Arduino Micro microcontroller, which retains programs uploaded via Schmig's laptop, and his movements are controlled by Schmig's smartphone via a Bluetooth connection. When he "speaks" — his robotic voice box is pre-programmed with a series of phrases — an array of five LEDs in his smile illuminate in patterns that correspond to his speech.
Plus, he wears a tiny tuxedo and confetti shoots out of the top of his head.
Interested brides and grooms can rent Oscar's services for between $250 and $500, depending on the duration of his stay, plus travel expenses, since he "lives" in Minneapolis.
Oscar the WeddingBot. Image: Jon Schmig, WeddingBot.
A few other hobbyists in the United States have tried their hand at robotic wedding companions. In fact, Chicago native Ben Stone claims to be the first person to have been married by a robot, when the homemade "Nuptron 3000" presided over his nuptials in 2004.
And a group of former engineering students at UC Santa Cruz have made a hobby of building robots for their friends' weddings. Most recently they created B.E.N.D.E.R. (the BananaSlug Engineered Nuptial Drink Emitting Robot, which shares its name with Futurama's favorite metallic lush), a robotic bartender that can mix up to eight ingredients and is controlled via a tablet interface.
The couple continues to bring Bender out at parties, Andrew Parra, one of the designers, told Mashable. Parra is getting married this year, and his friends are already hard at work on his very own robot.
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