The NAO Humanoid robot from French robotics company, Aldebaran Robotics, was recently chosen by the RoboCup Standard Platform League to be its new standard platform. The league, formerly known as the Four-Legged League, used to use Sony's AIBO robot as it's standard platform. However, since Sony…
Ugobe is busily preparing for an October launch of its dinosaur artificial-lifeform, Pleo, by releasing a series of "Behind the Scenes" videos on the making of Pleo. Also video that has popped up online, is a parody of the Budweiser "Wassssup" commercial featuring Pleo. Yo…
Keepon, a robot designed to study, "dance-oriented nonverbal play with between children and the robot" gets his big debut in a music-video featuring the music of Spoon. The robot, designed and built by Hideki Kozima, and programmed by Marek Michalowski, has four degrees of freedom, two…
The 10th annual, international, AUVSI sponsored, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) competition wrapped up Sunday. For the third straight year it looks like University of Florida's SubjuGator has taken first place. UF is followed by University of Central Florida with their year-old, rapid pr…
RoboCup 2007 is going on right now (July 3rd - 10th) in Atlanta GA, on the campus of Georgia Tech University.This international competition pits teams of robotic soccer players against each other.This year will see the addition of the brand new "Nanogram Demonstration challenges",…
Scientists from the Shiga University of Medical Science and Ritsumeikan University in Japan, have created yet another miniature robot to explore around the inside of your bod y. The robot, which is less than 1" x 0.5" is inserted through an incision and is moved by controlling a magnet…
This is an update to our previous post about this miniscule but amazing 'hand' from UCLA . The hand, which measures 1mm across when closed, is powered by gas pressure, and is hoped to be one day used in micro surgery. Balloons at the finger joints inflate to close the hand.You can also …
Here's an interesting post from Engadget . Disney has rolled out an interesting muppet mobile in its Disneyland themepark. The very Segway-esc creation is supposed to be the invention of Professor Bunsen Honeydew and his talkative sidekick, Beaker. The vehicle roams around the park and entert…
If you've ever need a digital servo but have balked at the price, the Open Servo Project should be an attractive option. The project seeks to develop software and hardware to replace the internals of standard servos like the Futaba S3003 and the Hitec-HS311. OpenServo is an open community-based pr…
I always like to point out great design when I see it, and Mike Smyth's Minimechadon is a prime example. Mike created the little guy to experiment with learning algorithms for walking. The robot weighs 12oz and has 4 degrees-of-freedom. The sensor array consists of 4 touch sensors on the bottom of…
To break our month of silence (Masters Thesis research, sorry) I thought I'd throw in some humor, via Engadget. Listen as a caller to the San Francisco Chronicle go berzerk over the phrase "pilotless drone". There's also some humorous remixes.The moral of the story? Some folks ne…
Starting Saturday, February 3rd, Ugobe will offer it's robotic dinosaur, Pleo, for preorder. The price is expected to be around $250, and Pleo is expected to ship sometime in the 2nd Quarter of 2007 (April - June).Pleo features over 30 sensors, a video camera, SD and USB ports, a 2hr battery ru…
WowWee Toys, probably one of the largest robotic toy manufacturers, has announced three new additions to it's robotic lineup at this year's CES show. In addition to the hugely popular Robosapien line of toys, you will soon be able to get a robotic panda, RoboPanda and spider-like robot, Ro…
The secretive French robotics company, Aldebaran Robotics , has released a sneek-peek of its secretive robotic project, Nao . There a a few videos of the robot partially revealing itself. We get a glimps of it's hand waving, what appears to be its feet, and some facial recognition. The 14 person …
In a not-so-surprising move, iRobot Corp. has announced their new iRobot Create programmable robot. The platform allows you to use the robust Roomba-like chassis to create your own robotic creations. An optional Command Module plugs right into the cargo bay to allow you to program and controll the…
The folks from the DARPA Urban challenge have issued a press release (PDF) detailing the prizes for the competition. The top three finishers will now be awarded $2,000,000 USD, $1,000,000 USD, and $500,000 USD respectively. Originally, they were only going to offer trophies to the winners due to …
