Mars Rover Stuck After over five years of tireless service, the Mars rover Spirit is one again in trouble. Our long-lived martian friend now appears to be stuck in the sand. Spirit, which has been dragging an immobile wheel for nearly three years, has been circling a, "low plateau calle
Festo, a German engineering company which brought us the stunning AirJelly, has now unveiled their latest project - life-like robo-penginus. Even better, there 's a swimming and a flying version. The penguins, which were designed to showcase a new mechanical linkage/control design for robotic a…
 General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled it's latest version of the wildly popular Predator Drone - the Predator C Avenger. The Avenger, which made its first flight tests earlier this month, is expected to be a viable product within 10 - 12 months, and could be patrolling the un
NASA is working on an UAV to fly above the surface of mars and take high resolution video of the landscape below. The ARES mission will involve a 6.5 meter wingspan UAV that will cruise along 1 mile above the martian surface. The cameras on board are very high resolution, such that, "if there was…
Riding with Robots brings us a neat story of how NASA has recycled one of their missions, and turned it into another. The EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation) mission utilizes the main vehicle from the Deep Impact mission to performan another series of expe…
Boeing reported today that it has successfully destroyed several flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using a laser weapon mounted on a truck. The weapon was mounted to an Avenger Air Defense vehicle, which normally uses surface-to-air missiles for attacks. The successful test involved the Laser…
 If anyone doubted the US Air Force's commitment to unmanned (read: robots) aircraft, you won't after you hear this: The Air Force plans on acquiring more unmanned than manned aircraft next year. That's a pretty amazing statistic, and amounts to billions of dollars of potential new busine
We've reported on such matter before, but once again a US Military drone (robot) has successfully fired on and killed at least 5 militants (terrorists) on the Pakistani border. It's great to hear that the "bad guys" are getting the due, and that US soldiers are being kept from harm by our roboti…
A couple interesting submarine launched UAVs, one by Raytheon and another, VOLANS, built by a German company, are featured in this Register article. The Submarine Over the Horizon Organic Capabilities, or SOTHOC, built by Raytheon, is launched out of the waste disposal lock of a sub…
The US Army has decided to move it's Robotics Systems Joint Project Office to Warren, MI, outside of Detroit. In response to this, many large robotics companies are following suit and opening offices in the area. The office is currently hiring engineers and designers to create robots to do “d
 In what is pretty stunning news to me, iRobot has purchased Nekton Research for $10 million USD. The reason this is so stunning, is because Nekton is 30min down the road from me, and I've interviewed there! Nekton is a small business located in Durham North Carolina and specializes in unde
The Mars Phoenix Lander is dying dead (see below). Dying a slow death of hypothermia. You see, the fading Martian summer sunlight is causing Phoenix to become starved for photons with which it charges its batteries. Without a fresh battery charge each day, Phoenix is unable to keep its heaters r…
Chris Anderson, over at DIY Drones, recently posted a full page advertisement, from the July edition of the AUVSI magazine, for AUS International’s AirSniper product. The AirSniper is described as, “a VTOL combat mini UAV intended for close infantry support.†Or, in other word
Congradulations to the Phoenix Mars Mission team! Phoenix touched down and has sent the first pictures back to Earth. Once again, NASA has accomplished an amazing feat. Now begins Phoenix's three month mission.
The Phoenix Mars Mission is scheduled to touch down on Mars today, May 25th, at around 9PM EST. Keep track of the progress on the mission's website. We'll keep you updated with details. Update: You can watch live coverage of the landing on NASA TV. Mission briefing starts at 3PM EST, and lan…
You may remember our posts on the sad plight of iRobot, who had accused their ex-employee, Jameel Ahed, of stealing their design, only to have the US Military award a whopping $280 million dollar contract to said ex-employee, and rejecting iRobot. Oh the injustice! Weep no more, fellow shareh…
