This Instructable details a number of tiny robots (e.g. a cubic inch sumo and a pager-bot that fits on a quarter) built by the author. If nothing else, it’ll give you an idea for just how difficult it is to build autonomous, programmable robots on this scale. Building Small Robots: Making One Cubic Inch Micro-Sumo […]
An Arduino, model bulldozer, servos, and sensors can be hacked together to make a sub-$100 robotics platform, appropriately named Ard-e. While certainly nowhere near as fancy as this Wall-E replica, the price is right and the Arduino’s got a huge body of pre-existing code for working with sensors that the aspiring roboticist can build upon. […]
Our pal I-Wei Huang, of Crabfu Steamworks, has issued a challenge on the Trossen Robotics Forums. It’s a contest, judged my I-Wei, to find the most “characterful” robot. He writes: To bring a bunch of hardware the illusion of life and character. This is NOT about AI or fancy software or hardware. It’s not to […]
GRIP (Group for Interdisciplinary Psychology), a multi-professional workgroup at Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, Germany, has several detailed tutorials on adding a “spycam” to Pleo, to create a facial recognition system (via off-bot processing on a PC), and an XBee Module for RF communications to/from Pleo. Working with the Pleo Platform [Thanks, Robert!]
Trossen Robotics has announced the winners of their latest Trossen Robotics Community building contest. This scratch-built Wall-E, by TRC member 4mem8, won first prize (a SG-5UT Robotic Arm). Trossen writes: We got to watch 4mem8 bring this guy to life and document every painstaking step that he took building this Wall-E robot from scratch. That’s […]
Tim (BlueToothKiwi) at NXT Step blog says there is a new version of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 – it’s designed to work with several robot vendors including LEGO Mindstorms and iRobot. The free download is here.
Pink Tentacle points us to this amazing looking sea bream robot. Tai-robot-kun’s creator, professor Ikuo Yamamoto, says the robot can easily be mass-produced, outfitted with various cameras and sensors, and released into the sea to perform a wide range of oceanographic survey tasks. He adds that because the robot swims silently and looks like a […]
