Robotics

NASA has a little treat for all of us robot and/or space junkies out there. From 8 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET) every morning, Monday-Friday, work begins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, as engineers carefully assemble the Curiosity Mars Rover. And you can watch them do it live with NASA’s Curiosity Cam. Other than occasional “maintenance periods” ...

At McGill University Health Centre, prostate surgery was quickly becoming just a tad too routine. So they decided to mix it up a bit. Paging, Dr. DaVinci and Dr. McSleepy! DaVinci, a widely used surgery bot which allows doctors to operate from a remote location, and McSleepy, the anesthesiologist bot, joined forces to perform the world’s first fully robotic surgery. ...

Robots can be masterful pieces of art when enough funding, research, knowledge and artistry goes into their designs, but I think it’s important to remember that not all robots are created equal. ChefBot, an entry in SparkFun’s Antimov Competition is not a well-made robot. In fact, he’s down right hazardous. But what he lacks in precision and safety, he gains ...

EARL, short for Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher, is an automated bowling robot, capable of chucking a ball down the lane at 10 to 24 mph, with a spin rate from 50 to 900 rpm, plenty to keep up with the pros. Neil Stremmel, the managing director of the United States Bowling Congress, says that EARL is able to “throw a ...

We’re sure that there are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind strapping into a jet pack and soaring 8,000 feet in the sky at 60 mph, myself included. But out of those people, how many would be willing to not only fly a jetpack, but fly it into the crossfire of a war. Not many. Not to mention the government ...

It took 2,400 LEGO bricks, three Mindstorms NXT kits and nine additional NXT motors to complete, but Battlebricks’ MakerLegoBot has done it. The home-constructed LEGO 3D Printer is a LEGO-created device made to compose custom LEGO creations up to 12 bricks high. The 3D LEGO Printer assembles your LEGO designs brick by brick, following print commands through a USB connection ...

While the original Pleo might have been a dinosaur in sheep’s clothing, Innvo has decided to give the beloved dinobot another chance with Pleo Reborn. Far from heading towards extinction, the Reborn adds a heap of new features and upgrades which could potentially make Pleo a viable gift option for this year’s holiday season. While members of the PleoWorld newsletter ...

Now that you can control your NXT robot with your Android phone, rather than using yet another electronic device, there are ways to save the planet even further, thanks to Dexter Industries’ dSolar Systems. The 9V solar power system allows you to rig your Mindstorms NXT robots for harnessing the power of the sun. The solar system provides about 250 ...

Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics states that “a robot may not injure a human being.” But it’s hard for robots to comply to such stringent laws when the threshold of pain and injury varies so much from person-to-person. Borut Pov�e from the University of Ljubljana is conducting a research experiment which could help robots better understand their limits. Pov�e persuaded ...

Modern pop music is packed to the brim with machine-aided singers, probably more than we can even imagine. But what happens when the machines start singing for themselves? HRP-4, the first ever divabot, is a Japanese fembot programmed to sing. With an assortment of software enhancements, HRP-4 mimics pop singers down to their every last breath and facial tic. A ...