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iOS 17 Tips, Tricks, How-Tos, News

HowTo: Build a Robot That Will Clean Your House

Cheaper (and perhaps cuter) than a maid, the simple scrub bot is easy and cheap to make: "This state of the art cleaning robot is great at polishing floors and shining glass tables (provided that you soap it up first). It also disperses small particulates evenly across your floor in such a manner that your home may look cleaner than it actually is."

Meet Tanky: The Super Smart DIY Tank Robot That Can Map Its Own Surroundings

There are plenty of tank robots out there, but how many of them can recognize 3D objects and map their environment? Tanky, the tracked mobile robot, can do all that and more while rolling around on his bicycle chain treads. Created as a Master's thesis project, Tanky is made almost entirely of parts you can find at your local hardware store. It was built in two "layers" with the motors, electronics, and batteries on bottom and the processing unit, a laptop, on top. The motors came from cordle...

RoboDoc: A Kid-Friendly DIY Robot That Makes Doctor Visits a Little Less Scary

Remember going to the doctor when you were a kid? If the word 'traumatizing' comes to mind, you'll love the RoboDoc by MarkusB, a robotic doctor that makes checkups a little less scary (and a lot more fun) for kids. It all started when Markus took his 14-month-old daughter for a checkup. The finger clip that the doctor used to check her pulse terrified her, so Markus decided to build a heartbeat monitor just for kids that's much more likely to make them laugh than cry.

News: This Jet-Powered, RC Dragon Can Fly Over 100mph—And It Actually Breathes Fire!

WonderHowTo has seen its fair share of dragon-related projects, from dragon wings, to dragon kites, to less-complicated origami dragons, but we've yet to see anything quite like this. Radio-control plane builder Richard Hamel built this incredible seven-foot-long, fire-breathing dragon using a JetCat P80 turbine and a 50,000 volt stun gun, with a 2.4-gigahertz touchscreen radio controller to fly it.

News: Autonomous, Solar-Powered Fijibot Only Lives to Survive Another Day

Aside from being completely adorable, Fijibot is a completely autonomous robot that automatically seeks out light sources to charge his solar-powered battery. He's built from a 1.5 liter Fiji water bottle, packed with an Arduino Uno, 6 volt solar panel, and an Arduino Proto Shield. His other parts are all off-the-shelf gear you could grab at RadioShack, while the wheels are from a discarded RC car. Fijibot isn't a particularly useful robot, but it's still fun to watch him navigate from light ...

News: DIY Video Chat Robot Lets You Be Two Places at Once

Want to keep an eye on your home while on vacation? Terrorize your family pet while at work? A homespun telepresence robot might be just the ticket! Luckily, thanks to shrinking hardware costs and the efforts of renowned hardware hacker Johnny Chung Lee, building a physical avatar has never been easier! Lee's robot has two important parts: an iRobot Create and a lightweight netbook running Skype. Notable extras include a wide-angle lens and a plastic stand to raise the computer to tabletop he...

Bubblebot: Build Your Own Gigantic Bubble Generator

Love bubbles but hate the toil and trouble of using your own lungs to blow them? Allow us to introduce Bubblebot, the latest Arduino-powered toy to attain celebrity status on Instructables. It's not an easy project by any means—even the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur has fewer steps. But come on, it's an automated giant bubble robot! It's worth it!

News: Carnivorous Furniture Eats Flies and Mice for Energy

PETA wouldn't consider James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau's ingenious flypaper clock very eco-friendly, but I might beg to differ. The clock doesn't require any electricity or batteries. Instead it captures flies and converts the bodies of the dead insects into energy. Eight dead flies makes for roughly twelve days of power. Not bad.

News: Arabian Camels Tortured By Remote Control Robot Jockeys

In the wealthy oil man's world of Arabian camel racing, the tradition of using child jockeys has been replaced with the use of small robo-jockeys in recent years. But after finally ridding the game of the mistreatment of children, the sport is now under scrutiny again. The Dubai police have discovered a new feature illegally added to the torturous, whip-endowed robots: hidden stun guns.

News: IBM's “Watson” Supercomputer Demolishes World's Top Jeopardy Players

A testament of man vs. machine will air on February 14th, 15th, and 16th when IBM's supercomputer "Watson" is pitted against the world's fiercest Jeopardy players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, for a chance to win a cool $1 million. It took researchers four years to build Watson, a machine mastermind the size of ten refrigerators and equipped with complex algorithms capable of decoding the complexities of the human language (no small feat). Watch below as Watson kicks ass in a practice round ...

News: Polar Bears Play Bloody Game of Soccer With Snowball Spycam

Blizzard Cam, a 40 mph mobile spycam on skis, spies on a group of adorable polar bears (um, minus the blood stained faces) as they devour a pile of remains. Operated remotely, Snowball Cam is released from the Blizzard if scientists detect the bears may attack the device. The decoy can roll across most terrains (even up hill), and easily distracts the bears into a game of soccer. From a BBC TV program on polar bears.

Bacarobo 2010: Video Highlights from This Year's "Stupid Robot Cup"

Can a robot be dumber than a toaster? For the answer, look no further than Bacarobo—a yearly contest that showcases and celebrates and the world's dumbest, most adorable robots. Each year, ten robots vie for first prize. Each year, only one bot wins. Who took the title of Top Blockhead in this year's competition? That's something you'll want to see for yourself:

How To: Make a somersaulting robot

In this tutorial, we learn how to make a somersaulting robot. You will need: a gear box, 1.5 v DC motor, battery holder for AA, and a few gem clips. First, glue the gear box onto the battery holder and then glue the motor shaft in. Next, glue the gem clip on the pistons of the gear box. From here, add a broken eraser to the gem clips. Next, add another jumbo gem clip to the motor and you will get to play with it! This is a fun little robot to play with, enjoy using it and making it do tricks!

How To: Make a robot car

In this tutorial, we learn how to make a robot car. To start, you will need to prepare the sensors by placing in the pins and soldering. After this, you will need to connect the wires to these and solder them into the correct places. Use a map to find the correct placement for everything. After this, you will take your sensor boxes and bolt them into place on the base of the car. From here, you will need to use a band saw to cut out the cover for the car and the sides/back. Glue the sensors i...

How To: Build a simple solar rope-shimmying robot spy toy

If you want to become a great robotics engineer, then you need to start out small, and this robot is a great first-time project. It's the simplest kind of robot, with only one motor and a gear box, but it moves really interesting, capable of shimmying across a rope. You can send this rope-shimmying robot tospy on your neighbors for you (when you're too lazy to do it yourself). See how it's done!

News: Is This All-Robot Band Better Than the Beatles?

Will the bot band be to 2017 what the boy band was to 1997? You be the judge! In the videos below, two such groups offer electro-mechanical renditions of the B-52s' "Rock Lobster" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Creator James Cochrane writes, "What do you get when you combine retro computer parts and an up and coming robot band? The Bit-52s! This idea has been simmering in my mind for the last couple of years and after many months of procrastinating it is finally complete. I was also motivat...

Some Dissembly Required: Researchers Teach Robot to Lie

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently set about creating what might aptly be described as a baby Decepticon — a small, semi-autonomous robot vehicle that purposely engages in deceptive behavior to achieve its ends (in this case, winning a game of hide and seek). Worried? You needn't be! The project also seeks to examine "the ethical ramifications of creating robot's [sic] capable of deception." Phew!

News: Uncle Sam, the All-American Robot Snake

Don't be fooled by the fancy monocle: this servo-powered serpent is as American as Apple Computers. So American, in fact, that his creators at Carnegie Mellon decided to christen him Uncle Sam. Boasting more points of articulation than a GI Joe, Sam's hobbies include crawlin' in the dirt and climbin' trees.

How To: Change the channel of the AI-01 Robot

In this video, we learn how to change the channel of the AI-01 Robot. First, you need to find the channels that are on the back panel of the robot. After you do this, turn the robot off, then turn it back on. Then, press both sides of the buttons together. After this, you will press the left button to choose the number and then press the right button to choose the team. After this, you will press both buttons together and then grab the remote. Select the channel on the remote by doing the sam...

How To: Use the Lego Mindstorms NXT software to program robots

Lego Mindstorms is a great way to take your Legos to the next level by adding in the flavor of robotics! But, with taking it up to the next level, it does get a hair tougher! And if you're having trouble working with the Mindstorms software, this great video with Patrick Norton and David Calkins goes over each step of using the software so you can have your very own robot ready to go in no time!

News: The Future of Pancakes

Here's another latest in robotics: researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have developed a robot that flips pancakes. The most interesting aspect of the project is the use of kinesthetic teaching, in which the user "trains" the robot by example. The user grasps the robot's limb, and guides it through the motions the user would like it to adopt. This bot takes about 50 trials to get it, but in the end succeeds. Previously, I Want a Robo-Chef in My Kitchen.

News: Bicycle-Riding Robot Puts Pedals to the Metal

Robots have a long-standing obsession with tandem bikes. The first song ever sung by a computer? "Daisy Bell." If you don't recognize the title, you might nevertheless recognize the song's famous refrain: "But you'd look sweet/Upon the seat/Of a bicyle built for two." That was 1961. Fast forward nearly forty years and robots aren't merely singing about bicycles built for two, they're riding them. Take Joules, for example:

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