News and Updates about Robotics

Leave it to some lazy college kids to attempt to figure out a way to brew a pot of coffee without leaving the couch.

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.

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.

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).

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

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:

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.

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.

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

This Mindstorms NXT-based 'droid may be able to walk upright like a human being — but can he do the robot?

Robotics company Festo Bionics has released footage of a robotic manipulator arm modeled after an elephant's trunk. The first video in the gallery below is the concept animation; click on the second video to see the real thing in action. (Love how the grabbers hand off "giant peanuts" in the second video).

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.

Don't worry, the robot apocalypse is not upon us...yet. Wired reports it may be closer than you think:

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

This robot hasn't levitated any humans yet (especially not pictured Days of Our Lives star Deidre Hall), but it looks like the sky may be the limit with the Robo-Air Jet System.

Can't help but smile at this goofy, endearing nerd "master" (Vitalijus Rodnovas) guiding his copy-cat protege robot (coined Waldo). The rig allows Waldo to mimic Rodnovas' body movements in actual real time.

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.