iRobot issued a press release this morning detailing some of their new products . Of special interest is the new 250lb Warrior robot. Warrior, which is about six times the size of the packbot, can move at over 12mph over rough terrain and can carry a payload of up to 100 lbs. This annoucement coin…
This story lands in today's "very cool, yet very scary" category - South Korea develops a machine-gun equipped robotic sentry. The sentry robot is equipped with two cameras, one for day-time and one for infrared night vision, zooming capabilities, a speaker for notifying the intruder…
Caterpillar, the international maker of heavy machinery and eqipment, is seeking to enable it's bulldozers and eather movers to operate autonomously. Using a system of sensors and GPS navigation, the equipment would navigate around a building site while being cooridnated from a remote central l…
National Instruments announced today that it has created a LEGO Mindstorms NXT toolkit for direct interfacing between the kit and its powerful LabVIEW software. If you're one of the lucky few to own a copy of LabVIEW (most folks don't want to drop the $4k for it), then you will have the …
Instead of having a robot crawl through your intestines, how about it gliding along on a trail of slippery mucus? A group of researchers from Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, is taking this novel approach to inter-body exploration in order to protect the delicate lining of the in…
The Visual Lego software project allows you to gain full control of your NXT brick via .NET (Visual Basic, C#, etc.). This software wrapper allows you to access all the bricks functionality over the serial bluetooth link. The library, written by Bram Fokke, is almost complete. It can be downloaded…
I get a lot of emails and comments posted from folks asking questions about robotics. Unfortunately, most of them are rather specific and I just don't have the time to answer them all individually. Thankfully, that's where a few cool products, books, and websites come into play. Back when I first …
Reader David Aliaga, who's a member of the ZMP Inc. Education Team, sent us a note telling us about ZMP's latest product, the e-Nuvo WHEEL robot. The robot is based on Nuvo, but this time it's an inverted pendulum. Just to add up to the news, ZMP has launched what we called the…
First it was Jesse Sullivan, the first man to receive two bionic arms that are controlled via his own brain impulses, now it's Claudia Mitchell, the first woman to receive such an arm. Mitchell is the 4th such person to receive such an arm, which is controlled via nerves which originally went …
A group of scientists at MIT are working on a gas engine about the size of a quarter. Better yet, it's made out of sillicon. The device, who's individual pieces are all working, still needs to be fully assembled and tested. The engines components, like a combustion chamber, compressor, and turbine,…
Robot hobbyists (with a hefty wallet) rejoice! The long awaited 9-Series PC Robots from White Box Robotics are officially soon-to-be-shipping. The robots, manufactured by Frontline Robotics, which merged with Tom Burick's brainchild, White Box Robotics, are first being released in a low quantity, …
Here's a quick link dump to catch up on my lack of posts.Jim, over at The NXT Step, pointed out that the New Yorker is doing a cartoon caption contest with a robot theme. Go and submit your idea, let me know what you think up.Here's a story I picked up about a suicidal man being subdued by a SWAT t…
A new South Korean startup, D2E Robotics, plans on releasing a two-legged hobbiest robot in October. In what appears to be a move to compete with other companies, such as Kyosho, Kondo, and Hitec, the robot, dubbed D2V-ZN, will have simple voice recognition and a vision system. Though, strangely
A new Japanese robotics magazine, Robot Life, has polled 500 Japanese females to ask them who was their favorite commercial robot. The grand winner was the PaPeRo robot, pictured at left, built by NEC. Also making the top 10 list (though, at a dismal 10th), is our friend Robonova. Wakamaru and Mano…
Here's a round-up of the latest news relating to Ugobe's robotic dinosaur Pleo, courtesy of our sister-site, PleoBot.com.Exclusive ROBOT Magazine Interview with Pleo’s MakersUgobe Announces Release Date for Pleo!Forbes Says Pleo One of 7 Robots That Will Change Your LifeMore News from Ugobe …
It seems the Japanese are always one step ahead of us. This time it's the opening of a combination robot museum and department store. The store plans on stocking about 1,000 different robot goodies, and will feature the Nuvo robot as its main attraction. In order to create a market for its expens…
