“John Turturro’s character, who has been in the other two movies, Agent Simmons. I’m a fellow agent of his that is sort of his assistant and weapons expert, computer hacker, cyber sleuth.”

This confirms Tudyk will have a human role.

Skillet Lickers has also posted images from the TF3 set, showing soldiers (including Josh and Tyrese) battling behind a yellow cab. View the full set on Flickr.

Rollbar

Meanwhile, here are a couple of close up videos showing Optimus Prime, the Wreckers and Bumblebee emerging from their slumber for a bit of Chicago Transformers 3 filming this past weekend:

Via TLAMB

Until now, the weaponized Nascars have been dubbed stunticons, omnibots and rallybots, all three names have been rejected by MichaelBay.com’s Nelson. Nelson has since confirmed that they are actually called Wreckers. Wikipedia provides some background on the characters:

The Wreckers are a sub-team of Autobots in the fictional Transformers Universe, functioning essentially as a commando unit.

Red Faced

Filming last week on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, the Transformers 3 crew were using more cardboard head cut outs. This time, lowfatoreo’s YouTube video has highlighted a new character, red faced and angry looking this could be the robot mode of the Ferrari, Rollbar or a Wrecker, my personal guess is that it’s the red Wrecker. Hat tip to Transformers Live for picking this one out.

Einstein, Mercedes

Until now it’s been presumed that the Mercedes was the latest incarnation of Jolt, however Nelson has dispelled these rumors on the official Michael Bay site, pointing out instead that the Mercedes E550 is the alt mode of the Einstein lookalike robot, that is called Q (“like in James Bond”).

JustJared have also posted some shots of Patrick Dempsey looking very much like a badass:

Transformers 3 has also been spotted on the south side, filming alongside the rail tracks, including Autobot chase scenes, scenes of pedestrians running away screaming, and a video showing all the vehicles lined up, including what’s presumably Skids and Mudflaps new look.

Transformers lined up on south side

Almost a full cast of vehicles here, including the Nascars, Bumblebee, Skids, Mudflaps and Jolt.

Autobot chase

The next video shows the Nascar vehicles hotly pursued by the Autobots from an angle right in the thick of the filming, by johnnyism13 who happened to be in the right place at the right time:

This video, from the same location, shows people running away screaming whilst a shiny blue car calmly drives past.

Explosions closeup

This is another view of the explosions we’ve seen already, but from a ground view, much closer. Thanks to ReidCollins.

On set, a new red 4x4 truck has also been spotted, glowing and undamaged, it stood out prominently from the miscellaneous burnt out cars. This has now been confirmed as Rollbar — his name is spelled out on the vehicle and he sports the autobot logo. Rollbar doesn’t have a big personality within the Transformers franchise (or much of anything beyond being many different toys), with this character Bay is free to recreate as he pleases.

Add to all this, the cardboard head of Megatron has been thrown into the mix.

Rollbar

The folks over at TFW2005 investigated the T B logo on the back and found that it stands for “Tommy Built”, the jeep wasn’t originally built for the movie and a clip on YouTube showed it with a mounted machine gun on the rear, Paramount pictures have sinced removed the video.

Megatron

This one was picked up by Transformers Live:

Wacker Drive

The full picture set is available from The Chive

via Transformers Live