We've written about Lockwasher's rayguns before - he has some great junk robots, too!.
Via Makezine | Posted on 2008.08.19 at 08:58
The British military held a competition to find the newest batch of robotic surveillance drones. The article mentions that they compete in a mockup village, but sadly we don't get to see any of the action.
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.18 at 14:30
Scientists at the University of Reading have created a robot that runs not on microprocessors, but on brain cells extracted from a rat fetus. The robot is equipped with several sensors which stimulate the rat neurons whenever the robot approaches a wall; the response of the neurons then determines whether the robot avoids the wall or crashes into it.
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.15 at 13:34
Check out this awesome tool that [Alfonso Martone] built and wrote in to tell us about: a pin plotter made entirely from Lego (except for the addition of a pin in one brick).
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.15 at 13:13
Certainly a unique take on robotic kit, the Twitchie awaits your creative 'touch' - Twitchie is an open source multi-purpose robot kit. It has the capacity to frighten and scare, but also the power to love and care! It's a regular pathos-o-matic! Grown men scream! Maternal instincts long dormant, suddenly activated! It's a robot unlike any other, and you can make one with this kit.
Via Makezine | Posted on 2008.08.15 at 10:02
Opto-Isolator is an interesting art installation that was on display at the Bitforms Gallery in NYC. This single movement-tracking eye creates a statement about how we view art and is a response to the question "what if art could view us?".
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.14 at 18:47
Scientists from the university of Reading have created a simple wheeled robot with distance sensors that is controlled wirelessly by a network of cells from a rat's brain.
Via Makezine | Posted on 2008.08.14 at 16:31
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.
Via Makezine | Posted on 2008.08.13 at 03:58
Stanford's autonomous helicopter group has made some impressive advancements in the field of autonomous helicopter control, including inverted hovering and performing aerobatic stunts.
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.12 at 21:03
BP Australia has commissioned an online game where you get to drive robots around an obstacle course. Make no mistake, these are real robots. Actually they are modified versions of the Surveyor SRV-1 vehicles that are popular with research labs, and schools everywhere.
Via Hack a Day | Posted on 2008.08.12 at 15:13