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I found this off of Digg. It's a pretty impressive short film showing the Honda ASIMO racing an old man on an airport people mover. Especially note how "easy" it is for ASIMO to transistion from running to walking and vice versa. They've got a 30 second and a 60 second version. You'll nee…
Dan Gates, with Southern Oregon Robotics, is selling their extended Mini Sumo chassis kit for $30. This about 33% off the regular price of $45. The kit includes hardware, wheels (from Tigerbotics), and two servos. Keep in mind the servos aren't modified, but are easily hacked. The platform is ripe…
Ah, back home to North Carolina where the tea is sweet (very sweet) and the humidity makes it feel 15 degrees hotter. As promised, I'm here to provide closure to NCSU's journey to San Diego. And, no, we didn't place in the competition. We were so very close - one of the top contenders actually…
Well, it's 10:21 AM. Our first preliminary run starts at 11:00 AM. As of now, two teams have made it through the gate, and two teams haven't showed up. One team, I think the University of Florida, navigated to the acoustic pinger and surfaced. We also have another run tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM.…
It's almost 9PST and I'm standing here blogging pool (amazingly large dive tank?)-side. Our arrival time was pushed up one hour this morning to get teams here in time for some live coverage from a local San Diego TV station. ... Yeh, definitely got up at 5 AM. Mike and I walked into the command/al…
I've got a lot of audio but it's taking a long time to edit. Fingers crossed I'll have the first podcast up this afternoon. In the mean time, here's a few pictures from the first day of practice. shot of our setup Here's Seawolf being hoisted into the water for the first time. Behold the bea…
Well, I lied. Apparently I do have my camera cable. So, here's some pictures from earlier today. When the sun goes down, it gets pretty chilly here. Matt was freezing his butt off in the pool for a couple of hours, and now Jim is in the pool. NCSU University of Florida Montreal
Day one of the NCSU Underwater Robotics team's trip to San Diego for the International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition has come and gone. We arrived in San Diego around 10 AM after some miserable flight time. We waited around in the airport for about 2 hours for our luggage and a proper s…
Well, the 8th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition starts this Wednesday. That's the main reason why there hasn't been much activity on here. I'm on the NCSU Underwater Robotics team and we're taking an awesome robot to San Diego. There's pictures on our website. (btw, tha…
Well, it looks like meth lab perps are getting all fancy on law enforcement and boobytrapping their operations. We get a story out of the St. Louis area about a bomb removal robot getting put to good use. "... RMI-9WT Bomb Removal Robot, owned by St. Louis County police, ... detonated the [bo…
Here's a neat article about the UNC Hospital (just down the road from me) using Da Vinci surgery 'bots to treat cervical cancer. Doctors there think that robots are one of the best ways of doing a hysterectomy. One patient said, "I had surgery July 1 on Friday and came home on Saturday."…
Much apologies for not covering this sooner, but the final results from RobotCup 2005 have been released. The Small Size league winners are predictable - Germany (FU-Fighters), Cornell (Cornell Big Red), and Singapore (Field Rangers). First place for Middle Size goes to Japan, and first place in 4-…
The Lincoln Journal Star Online has an interesting article about telepresence doctor bots. The idea is that a doctor can check up on his patients without ever leaving the office, by way of a two way video conferencing robot. The way I see it, now he can bill you $500 dollars for that 5 minute (an…
It appears that New York Times journalists have all the luck, because this one got to review the latest from ZMP Inc., a cute yellow walking robot pal. Of course, the one central glowing eye does seem a bit spooky, but that's beside the point. Nuvo, who sells for about $6,000 (ouch) is, "mar…
When I first read that page title on Delicious I had visions of metal coils and current and ... dancing. However, I was wrong! Behold, a quicktime video of our favorite 80's cartoons breakdancing. Also, in related news, Transformers is going to be made into a movie. Oh the suspense!
The latest online issue of Sensors & Transducers Magazine is now available. Featuring a nifty little transaxel accelerometer, with a "sensitivity of 5 mV/g and a measurement range of В±1000 g peak", a "strain guage direct to PC" device, and a paper on remote ele…
