Heartland Robotics, a company founded by Rodney Brooks (founder and former Chief Technological Officer at iRobot, and MIT professor) is developing what should constitute a true robolution. Their main objective is to change the way we currently view robots by making them ubiquitous. Heartland R
Gostai, the creators of Urbi, the popular Open Source control software for robots, just released their new robot: Jazz. Jazz from Transformer (winstonltl.blogspot.com) Transformers fans, don't get too exited, because this is not a transforming robot from outer-space, it is a telepresence rob
Many new things happened at Willow Garage recently. So let's go ahead and have a look at all the awesome news. ROS Turns Three The Robot Operating System celebrated its third anniversary. It has come a long way since its beginning and should go even further in the future. See the video below for
This is a nice video from a while ago describing how to quickly and cheaply put together a robot by using an old RC toy, an Arduino (actually a Seeeduino), a Ping distance sensor and a couple of other components. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6DKDFwg9c More in-depth videos of the construc
A paper presented by a group of computer engineers from Vanderbilt University at the Humanoids Conference in Nashville describes how robots can be used to diagnose and treat emergency room patients. Medical Droid from Star Wars While human would still take care of the most serious patient
So far, all robotic vacuum cleaners follow the same design: a circular (or rounded) two-wheeled mobile platform that brushes and vacuums the floor while bumping into obstacles. This robotic vacuum cleaner concept by Dave Hakkens is definitely original and is certainly a completely new appro
The trailer for the upcoming DreamWorks movie Real Steel has been released! The movie is set in the near future and features robot fights which are a mix between the current robot wars competitions and human boxing. Hughes Jackman plays an underground robot maker and coach who gets a chance t
The Trons is a robotic rock band (or orchestrion) from New Zealand. They are mainly made out of old junk and salvaged electronics, and have performed over 80 "live" shows in the last three years. Although they are cybernetic, we are sure they play form the bottom of their harts ...er microcontro
PaPeRo, the little armless companion robot from Nec, is got a new video ad. Of course it is in Japanese and features some crazy/funny/silly Japanese action. Besides featuring a bunch of screaming men, it also show off the robot's features. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nubojTH1Y9c For those o
Robot arms skilled at wielding knives and carving meat, can be a bit scary, specially for us fleshy humans. Nevertheless, the HAMDAS-R by Mayekawa Manufacturing is a very impressive machine. It is capable of de-boning ham using a razor sharp knife by adapting to the shape and size variat
The trailer for the upcoming short film BLINKY by Ruairi Robinson has been released. See it below. [vimeo 16755989] The film is set in a not so distant future and features a domestic robot that apparently turns into a rampaging killer...Either that, or it enjoys ketchup too much. Blinky is
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 …
Some time ago, we announced the nomination for the Top Ten Coolest Robots of 2010. You voted and now the results are in. Let's have a closer look at the ten lucky robots and find out which one is the big winner. #10 Google Car and Bae Systems Taranis Tied These two robots are tied in the number
Sentient Robot The trailer for the upcoming movie Transcendent Man has been out for some time and it has now been confirmed that the long awaited film will be released early next year (2011). Transcendent Man introduces the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, the renowned futurist who journeys the w
