Autonomous Flocking Blimps
Great project from Jed and Nikhil (videos) – “We designed a working metaphor of a new ecology of things by using networked objects. This was possible through the sponsorship of Sun Microsystems who donated instrumental technology. Through a defined research process we designed objects that behave and respond in specific ways and are part of a networked system that emphasizes autonomous and flocking behavior. There are two main components: feeding and flocking. ALAVs are 3 flying objects (Bubba, Flipper, and Habib) that exist in a networked environment and communicate through assigned behaviors forming three scenarios: ALAV with a person, ALAV with other ALAVs, ALAV alone.” [via] Link.
Google video of the 
MAKE pal Roger Ibars has a great blog with all of his student’s work..I really like the serial zapper – “This is a defensive weapon against the threat of TV-set…Put «serial zapper» in front of your ennemy, Take the gun from the case, Walk backwards 20 feet (depends from the distance of your sofa) and shoot the right target to change channel, volume or to turn the TV off.” 
Ryan Clarke from the Parallax support forums is hacking the Sharper image chimp head – “Getting the skin off isn’t that bad…it’s a stubborn rubber cement type glue…Opening the skull only requires the removal a few screws in the back of the skull…the two touch sensors on the back part of the skull (top and back of head) are the only wires you need to be careful of when opening the skull…The touch sensors scope out in a very similar fashion to the flexiforce sensors (Parallax part #30056). Running the flex sensors in the same circuit with the same code as the FlexiforceSimple.BS2 (available on the product page above) you get a distinct 0 or 1 for output (with a bit of button bounce at the beginning of a press)- It does not appear as though the sensors will be useful for ‘analog’ input proportional to the strength of the touch, but I have not verified this as of yet.” 
GoRobotics confirms our suspicions. “It seems to be pretty self-evident that pets are good for their owners. But, what about robot pets? Some scientists at the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue’s Veterinary school say yes, robot pets do benefit humans. Petting an Aibo caused the human stress hormone cortisol to decrese in patients, much like a real dog, although the effects weren’t as pronounced.” [
I was about to do a round up of all the Survial Research Lab photos and video from Saturday, but Scott over on Laugh Squid has most of them “Blog reports and photos from Saturday’s SRL mini-show in Los Angeles are starting to trickle in: SRL show in LA Chinatown: photos and phonecam video (Boing Boing), Chinatown Survival Research Labs (IvyMike), Photos of SRL in Chinatown (Metroblogging Los Angeles), Survival Research Labs goes Fringe in Chinatown (Resize), Images from an SRL show (Satori), SRL Jan 2006 (bluematt).” 
Pavel and Richard writes – “Last summer, we had a a lot of fun controlling RoboSapien robot using the serial infrared tower from LEGO Mindstorms version 1.5 kit. However, this required the tower (and thus also a PC) to be in the robot vicinity. Still, thanks to the feedback from the new WowWee family robots owners, we were very keen on seeing that the same program with small modifications can be used for RoboSapien V2, RoboPet, and RoboRaptor …” Here’s how to walk your robo dog with a LEGO bot! [