Robotics

New robot building website for 2015! @ http://beambuilder.blogspot.co.uk/

I have always been interested in arts, crafts and electronics, like many people who saw the Guardians of the Galaxy, at the end of the movie they show a small dancing Groot plant. There have many who have just taken apart (a now hard to get) dancing sunflower and just built one on top. Well, I want to know how to make my own. How to put together all the parts that make the plant dance, but I dont know where to start. Any help is appreciated.

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.

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.

This is OSCAR, the Overly Simplified Collaboratively Actuated Robot. He's built from an old Roomba and an Android tablet, and he's about to make Google+ a lot more interesting.

The war against machines is near, thanks to Cyberdyne... I mean... the German Aerospace Center. The DLR Hand Arm System is a terminator-like anthropomorphic appendage that functions just as a normal human hand and arm would. Only it's way more durable and can take a beating from not only a hammer, but a baseball bat. Possibly the next-gen soldier?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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:

Japanese artist and visual designer Akira Nakayasu creates robotic plants that not only respond to human touch, but anticipate human touch.

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...

Careful or you may find yourself crushing on this cute little Android named HRP-4C. From the head up, the Japanese robot could easily be mistaken for one of her human backup singers. Freaky!

How can a small curtain cover a window three to four times its own size? With a motor and a robot brain, that's how!

Goodbye, BabyBjörn; hello, cherry-red mechanical exoskeleton! Now that 400-pound steel-clawed battle suits are available in Children's Small, what kid could possibly content him or herself with getting around by stroller?

What feature would we most like to see in the robots of tomorrow? Why, the ability to interact with human beings without crushing them to death, of course. Happily, thanks to a new pressure-sensitive synthetic skin technology, the dream is within reach:

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."

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.

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 same...

Though named "Walker," this robot doesn't really ambulate so much as shimmy. Which, to tell the truth, is fine by us. Lots of gross things walk. Only cute things dance.

Androgynous. Stumpy. Creepy. The horror movie robot, created by the notorious Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, is projected to be available for around $8,000 later this year.

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.

This LEGO Mindstorms NXT Rover Bot is a monster. Depending on the camera angle, the scale looks huge (check out the person in the background). 9 NXT's controlling 16 XL power functions motors! Amazing.

Or otherwise known as nerd nirvana.

Everybody loves butterflies. What's not to love? They're beautiful.

This project has been posted on Vimeo for the past two years, and somehow has just entered my radar now. Get this: A robot is manned by a Madagascan hissing cockroach. Each movement the roach makes (perched atop a trackball type ping-pong ball) controls the movement of the robot.

There is little design artifice to this device. This EMILY (Emergency Integrated Lifesaving LanYard is a $3500 robot-lifeguard purchased for Malibu lifeguards. Remote-controlled and capable of 28 mph, product testing confirms that EMILY just might be smarter than David Hasselhoff and more buoyant than Pamela Anderson.

This year's fifth annual Maker Faire featured a fully articulated, fire-breathing animatronic dragon named Saphira (after the dragon from the book Eragon).

The first marriage to be officiated by a robot took place in Japan this past Sunday. A humanoid robot named I-Fairy stood in as witness at the ceremony between Tomohiro Shibata and Satoko Inoue of Tokyo.

This is a video tutorial describing how to make a lego optimus prime head. The first step is to get all of the LEGO pieces that you will need. You will need tiles, plates, connector pieces, translucent pieces, technique pieces, and a few speciality pieces. First start by taking your plate and adding 2x2 piece, then add two 1x2 tiles, one on each side. Then add a 1x2 plate. Then add two connector pieces to hold on the chin of the head. Then add the 1x1 pieces. Then add two translucent pieces. To...

Robots are great for performing tasks that are otherwise too dangerous for man (e.g. dead body extraction bot). BeetleCam is a cute little bot that takes all the danger out of wild life photography. Controlled remotely from a Range Rover about 50 yards away, BeetleCam ventures where no sane photographer dares to go (at the feet of a charging elephant, say).

Artist Giles Walker's robot peep show/DJ installation piece gives us a little glimpse of what strip clubs could look like in the future (well, let's really hope not, guys). Walker also teams up with Frank Barnes and his robot drummers (second video in the gallery below, check it out - pretty sweet).

Kojiro the robot has muscles, tendons and a flexible spine- just like you! Combine Kojiro with the doppelganger bot and you'll have something supremely sci-fi freaky.

CMU's Biorobotics Laboratory modular snake robot slithers in all sorts of different ways. Check out the three videos in the gallery below.

This video describes how to make a talking robot mask using iPhone. For that you need Reading scale, Cutter scissor, Box to fix into head, Cutter Knife, Screw Driver, Glue, Cello tape, Aluminum Foil, Pen, 2 Bottle caps, used paper and an iPhone with mouth analysis software. First take together, now take that Box and have to two parts for make it convenient to wear into head by sticking both using Cello tape, now we have to make the mouth with size of "50mm by 75mm" which will fit with iPhone's...