Little Bird Unmanned Full-sized Chopper The Little Bird, a full-sized autonomous helicopter made its first flight last June. For the first time, a full sized autonomous robot performed an entire flight (including take-off, obstacle avoidance, and landing) by itself. The helicopter is a modified
BAE Taranis UCAV The Taranis is an Unmanned Combat Aircraft System (UCAS) developed by BAE Systems for the UK military. This stealth "swept delta" aircraft is intended to be fully autonomous and look utterly awesome. Although test flights are programmed to start in 2011, it is important to note th…
BEAR by Vecna Robotics The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR) is a new robot for the US military intended to rescue wounded soldiers in an active battlefields. It has been developed by Vecna Robotics form in Cambridge, MA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMIU-5fJd6A This robot is much
Bina48 Interview New York times reporter Amy Harmon has recently interviewed Bina48 a humanoid robotic bust that can have human-like conversation with other humans. Chat robots have been around for a while and started with the famous A.L.I.C.E. In the past, people could chat with these robots tho
We are happy to announce that the PR2 from Willow Garage has a very good friend, the Kawada HRP2-JSK. Since robots do not have emotions (yet) or know the concept of friendship (yet), by "fiends" we mean that they can use the same open source code to perform the same tasks. This might not seem…
As reported by The Economist some time ago, the US military has partnered with Robotic Technology of Washington, DC in order to produce the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (a.k.a. EATR). The robot is expected to achieve energetic autonomy by eating plants. Although this might seem as
At RobotShop we know that the Arduino is very popular among roboticists, hobbyist and professionals alike. Its success is mainly due to the openness of its design, and its utter ease of use. Also, the fact that it is an affordable platform that can be programmed using an Open Source ea
FURO - The Korean Emotional Service Robot Future Robotics has recently unveiled their new FURO (Future Robot) . It features an LCD displaying its feminine face, purportedly capable of displaying "attractive" emotions, and a larger LCD touchscreen for human interaction. The full system is of human
Virtual Breadboard is a free circuit prototyping software that has readily available hardware and software simulation tools. It can simulate various hobbyists microcontrollers including the popular Arduino, and the Parallax Basic Stamp. As shown below, this software not only simulates the Arduino …
As a follow up of our recent Beer-Fetching post, we are happy to report that the PR2 is making a remarkable progress in this area. The people at Willow Garage have been busy (and thirsty) programming the PR2 so it can fetch beer as dictated trough a web interface by their human masters. The projec…
For ages, humans have wanted robots to do one simple task: to go to the refrigerator and bring refreshments such as Beer, and food to the lazy human watching TV. We have shown lately a beer-fetching robot. Now, the people at the Denver based Gamma Two Robotics have created a voice controlled beer
Kudos to the IEEE Spectrum people for having put together this rather interesting matrix of child-sized humanoid robots. They are classified by appearance (from robotic to freakishly human), and capabilities (from simulating a runny nose to full autonomy). It is good to note that the familiar
Surena II (2) is a new humanoid robot developed by the Tehran University in Iran. It is the first Iranian humanoid robot, it weighs 45 kilos, and is 4.76 feet tall (1.45m) and is intended for "sensitive and difficult jobs". Surena II - Iranian Humanoid Robot The robot has been unveiled on
The iRobot Roomba has reigned supreme in the robot vacuum market for a long time. But recently, many new vaccum robots have been released by very prominent manufacturers such as Phillips, Samsung, Asus and MSI. The new generations of robots features, in general, smart maping capabilities that al
The people at Willow Garage have reached a new milestone last Tuesday morning when they completed shipping out their eleven PR2 Robots for their Beta Program. Now the PR2 is out in the wild and we are looking forward to see what awesome tasks it will perform (besides folding towels and playing pool…
After some trepidations and delays, Neato Robotics has announced they are launching their new XV-11 spatially smart robot vacuum on July 15th. On this date, the robot will be available for preorder at various retail locations and will ship out in August 2010. Neato Robotics XV-11 For those wh
