Inverted pendulums (i.e. balancing a stick on a moving platform) never ceases to fascinate humans, especially when it is done by a robot. Pencil Balancing Robot The robot illustrated in the video below is capable of balancing a pencil on its tip. The motion of the pencil is tracked by two im
About a week after the Open LiDAR project was announced, the Neato XV-11 has been hacked and now its juicy LiDAR data can be used by everybody. This effectively makes the Neato XV-11 not only one of the most advanced vacuum cleaner robots in the market, but also, the cheapest LiDAR available.
Kinect Hacked The Kinect was quickly hacked a few weeks ago and now, the development around this sensor is advancing very fast. The Kinect is a 3D camera made by Microsoft that not only senses a full colour video, but also sees the depth of objects and scenes. [vimeo 17007842] In the robotics …
For quite some time now, Festo, a leading pneumatics company, has been innovating in the robotics field by creating impressive and very unique robots inspired by nature. The video below, is a good summary of their innovative work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X5KdVS1LFk Make sure you also hav
iRobot and the University of Chicago released a video of their universal robotic gripper. This gripper that can conform to the shape of seemingly any object. Once it conforms to an object it uses vacuum to become rigid and grip it. This exploits the property of granular materials such as coffee to …
The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab has been doing pretty amazing job with their quad-rotors UAVs. University of Pennsylvania Aggressive Quad-rotors UAVs These robots can do pretty impressive manoeuvres that humans would have a very hard time to imitate. They fly trough free-falling ho
Google Autonomous Car Google, the ubiquitous Internet giant, is leaning more and more towards robotics. Google's interest in robotics started with the clever naming of their Android cell phones, and continued with their acquisition of several UAVs. Now, they are road testing fully autonomous ca
Roomba's manufacture, iRobot recently filed a patent for a new indoors navigation system. The system is called "Celestial Navigation System" and is intended to be used on domestic robots that work indoors. iRobot Celestial Navigation System patent This navigation system is intended to compet
Upcoming Invenscience robot arm Invenscience is developing a new large scale robotic arm that will use their ridiculously powerful Torxis servo motors and a gripper developed for their previous Advanced Robotic Manipulator. Torxis High Torque Servo Motor There are not many details availabl
Core Biped Transport Robot The Core project, by fuRo, the Future Robotics Technology Center, consists of a very large biped robot that can carry up to 100 Kg. It is meant to be a human transportation vehicle but we can envision how it could become a three meter tall rampaging humanoid quite easi
Tandy Trower, the 57 years old retired Microsoft employee and creator of the Microsoft Robotic Studio, launched a new Seattle-based start-up called Hoaloha Robotics. The main goal is to produce a unified programming environment and robotic interface (à la ROS) in order to commercialize afford
This rather inspiring video from RoMeLa is every interesting and shows a nice summary of all the amazing robots at the innovative approach used in order to develop them. This is definitely a must see for all robot geeks and no so geeks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfR6tiSW-AM Via Mak
DLR-Biped Schematics DLR's Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics unveiled the DLR-Biped a walking biped platform that could very well become Justin's legs (given they can support its weight). This outstanding platform was developed in a mere 10 months and uses technology borrower from previo
Engineers and researchers form the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany and making some interesting "scientific research" about the way humans perceive motion by riding a giant industrial robot arm from Kuka while playing video games. As depicted in the video b
RobotShop Grand Tutorial Series: How To Make a Robot Nowadays everybody is making robots, if you do not want to be left out we suggest you have a look at a new series of tutorials that will be released on the GoRobotics Blog. The first out of ten lessons has been published today. The remaining
In an heroic effort to learn everyday household skills, this robot arm form the Italian Institute of Technology has learned the indispensable pancake flipping skill every robot needs (as thought by Dr Petar Kormushev andDr Sylvain Calinon). Despite the great difficulty of this task (who hasn't w
