Have you been to the SheekGeek robotics store yet? The company, run by an aquaintance of mine, Adam Harris, sells educational robotics kits. Adam says, I started a company and am now making and selling robot kits among other electronic and educational products (still developing products actually.) …
People love to anthromorphize robots. I'm not sure why, but they do, and because of this the Smith family is now selling Roomba costumes at myRoomBuds.com. Greg Smith (the father) says, "My kids started a business to sell costumes for Roombas. We have two and are now just another one of th…
Here's an audio presentation by Theo Jansen at PopTech 2005. Jansen is the creator of the amazing beach creatures that we've covered before (which happens to be our most popular post). Jansen talks about his creatures and how he started creating them. Unfortunately, there seems to be a significant …
IEEE Spectrum magazine has an excellent article detailing the current status of exoskeletons worldwide. The article is from last month, so, as of this writing the HAL-5 Exoskeleton from Cyberdyne Labs should be available in Japan. It has two control systems: one reads from the wearer's body to dete…
Apparently bombs are becoming more and more of a problem for Israel (and other places) and in response, InRob Tech Inc. is beefing up it's lineup of bomb-disposal robots. Information Week says: [InRob] will begin developing a larger version of its bomb-disposal robot. The beefed up system wil…
This isn't strictly robot related, but have you seen the South Leicester Aeronutz website? There's some really amazing radio controlled creations on there. Most of the creations use very thin (2mm) foam walls and tiny pager-type motors to turn the prop. You can purchase super-small (under 1cm squ…
In continuation with our first post about the International Robot Exhibition 2005 (IREX), here's some more cool robots from the exhibition. Breakdancing robot - I'd really like to see some video of this one.Also check out the exploding robot.Here's a small humanoid robot that can be controlled via …
ZMP, the Makers of the Nuvo robot have created an educational version called, "eNuvo" for use in schools. Robots-Dreams.com has some video and more information about it, in addition to the video on ZMP's site. [The] 12 weeks course includes: Coordinate systems of link structure, Motor Driver circui…
Joe Engelberger, called, "the father of modern robotics", because he started the first company to use robots, has called the robots featured at the International Robot Expo, "toys," reports the Sidney Morning Herald. "These are toys that are being made," h…
The International Robot Exhibition (IREX) is going on right now in Tokyo, Japan! The 4 day long exhibition is featuring over 200 companies and some really cool robots. It looks like about the only site really covering the event is Akihabara News. The PacMan robot at IREX (with video) is cur…
Hansen Medical just raised $30 million dollars in its third round of funding. Vanguard Ventures lead the funding. The company has raised about $58 million so far. According to their website, Hansen Medical: ... marries robotic technology with computed movement and is designed to enable …
And you thought all that business about synthentic hands replacing real ones, viz Star Wars, was Hollywood trickery. Well, you thought wrong! It would appear that the Cyberhand Project is bringing a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, to the here-and-now. Each of the five fingers is arti…
I predict 2006 will be the year of the RoboOne robots. First, Hitec gets into the action with its RoboNova robots, and now Volks Inc. is selling their very slick "Robofie" robots. Just from looking at the movies, it would appear that the Robofie is a bit more dexterous than RoboNova (here are some …
You may have seen the new Manoi robot from Kyosho featured on Akihabara News or Engadget, the the thing that sruck me, was its uncanny likeness to Chroino, which made big waves at this year's RoboNexus 2005 conference (photos). Engadget claims they're built around the Kyosho KHR-1 robot body, but …
Fully transformable robot costumes. It made its way from BoingBoing to Engadget and then here. Be your favorite Transformer character next halloween and transform, while you're wearing it. Engadget says: Since 1993, Canadian aerospace worker De Repentigny has been creating one-of-a-kind, stri…
Wow, this really snuck up on me, but CEO Colin Angle and Chairman Helen Greiner rang the opening bell at the NASDAQ today. There were celebrating the offering of iRobot's stock, which is trading under the symbol "IRBT". Great going guys! It closed today at $26.70 after opening at $34.16 w…
