Robotics: Page 2

Office workers beware, or a snarky robot may unleash a barrage of ping pong balls upon you. A somewhat sinister individual from the CKBot group at UPenn's Modlab concocted the prank.

A Merry Christmas robot medley of song and dance, courtesy of Bot Junkie.

This holiday season, two lucky consumers will have the opportunity to purchase a robot twin, specially made by Japanese robotics firm Kokoro.

This year's FOOMA International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition had a few robots I wouldn't mind hanging around my kitchen. The sushi-bot's hand is amazing... if only it could make the sushi, not just transport it. Oh well. There's always next year.

As November was coming to an end this year, the "6th Robo-One Gate in International Robot Exhibition 2009" dance competition took place. The contenders are just a little bit creepy, to say the least. Particularly exhibit A, Britney Spears wannabe,  "LOVE & JOY, Yuhi Kimura", by Doka Harumi.

Wow, this robot has incredible movement.

Kogoro Kurata, master ironsmith, known for his massive, impressive metalworking. His creations are awe-inspiring. Any blacksmith or engineer would agree.

You can try and try, but all the practice in the world can't compete with this robotic hand's pen spinning skills.

These soccer playing robots from TU Freiberg Robotics are programmed using Knesthetic Bootstrapping, which control the Bioloid's motions. Players can send commands to the soccer bots via Wii Remotes, and users abroad can control them directly online.  If soccer's not your game, robots can play chess, too.

Systm is the Do It Yourself show designed for the common geek who wants to quickly and easily learn how to dive into the latest and hottest tech projects. We will help you avoid pitfalls and get your project up and running fast.

For some reason I find this hilarious. This chair's got perseverance. Sure, he's slow, but it's worth the wait. More information at Robotic Chair.

University of Tokyo and MIT join forces to create a high speed, three fingered, robot pitcher. From Pink Tentacle:

Real life transformer, OmniZero, can climb a ladder, perform somersaults, jump rope, crack eggs, battle other robots, and best of all, carry a person. Witness all of these actions of the various OmniZero prototypes in the video gallery below.

This amazing ball catching robot named TOTO (Tracking of Thrown Objects) has been built to speed up "fully automated production systems...where parts will be transported between workstations by robotic throwing and catching".

What is in store for the future? Flying cars? Maybe. Dinner in a pill? Perhaps. How about 4-legged army tank robot dogs? Hell ya!

Hell, yeah! Play with your food.

Wu Yulu's life story belongs in a Disney movie.

Check out this Make Magazine segment on building mini robots. Then you can move onto huge ones like Big Dog!

Sparky is a wireless, web-based video-chat robot from the Gomi Style crew. You can learn how to make your own Autonomous Telepresence robot using spare computer parts, some old toys and a bit of custom software (that we provide at gomistyle.com). This robot is operated with a Make controller circuit board. Sparky is a retired electric wheel chair with a monitor as a head.

This scorpion toy was constructed by Make Magazine with a Twitchie Robot Kit. If you're afraid of real life scorpions this friendly toy might help you get used to them. His plush body is made from some fabric aiming to make him look like an Arizona bark scorpion, which are tan/yellowish/translucent. Twitchie is Arduino powered and comes pre-programmed, so it's an excellent kit for beginners in robotics, because no programming is required! You can download and modify the code if you want, and...

Here's how to make an electric motor with some wire. It looks like a cool spider.

Herbie the Mousebot is a very quick, easy-to-build, light-chasing robot kit, perfect for beginners. This little robot is so quick, you have to run to keep up with him! This is from make magazine.

This robot is BEAM bot inspired. First we build up the Motor Drive, an excellent and cheap Robot Bot-Base. We start with the Tamiya kit, get it going, then strap on a battery and a drag wheel, center the drag wheel. Tape it all in place with bright yellow tape and make a BEAM Bot with batteries. Plans for this BEAM framework are to add smarts.

Control an i-SOBOT with a wiimote. This tutorial shows how to do the i-SOBOT Slapping maneuver using Robodance and the Nintendo Wii Remote with Nunchaku attachment.

Check out this video to learn how to make a RepStrap robot. This project entails LOTS of materials. The only way you can learn what to use is by watching.

A five minute film on how to make your own edible robot. Edible robotics is an exciting new field of research into robots as food and prey. This research was supported by Robo250, the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, the Mattress Factory and MAYA Design, Inc.

Create teenie tiny solar robots with Bre Pettis of Make Magazine. Learn to make little teeny tiny robots called beambots that are powered by the sun! One of the great things about these little solar powered bots is that you can make them from scavenged materials. Use parts from broken electronics and bring them back to life as little robots! If you are not an expert in circuits, you will need books and pdf's to supplement this video.

A blinky bug is a small electro-mechanical insect that responds to stimulus, such as movement, vibrations, or air current, by blinking its LED eyes. This video will show you how to make a blinky bug for under 6 dollars and without having to solder.