Mar 23 2006
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting today that Carnegie Mellon University is planning to build a hi-tech robot research and development facility called Robot City on the site of a former steelworks plant. With the stated mission of moving “robots from laboratory to life,” Robot City will be populated by robots built to handle relatively mundane …
Mar 22 2006
Gizmodo.com is reporting that retailers will begin taking pre-orders for the forthcoming Lego Mindstorms NXT robot development kit starting April 1st. The system, priced at $249, will not ship until late summer and will be available at Amazon, Target, Fry’s and Wal-Mart. This follows the news from earlier this month that Lego had chosen 100 …
Mar 22 2006
In a press release put out this morning, California-based Evolution Robotics announced that they will be licensing their ViPR (Visual Pattern Recognition) and Northstar position tracking technologies for use in WowWee’s next generation of hi-tech consumer robots and entertainment products. WowWee, who manufactures the immensely popular Robosapien and Roboraptor robots, has recently been making a …
Mar 21 2006
As I predicted last Friday, the coverage by Robots-Dreams.com of the Robo-One competition that took place in Tokyo over the weekend has been nothing short of outstanding. Lem dropped us a comment this morning to let us know that he actually got some face time (pun intended) with the Pirkus-R Type-01 robot, the Bluetooth humanoid …
Mar 19 2006
For the premier issue of Robot magazine the guys from the popular Discovery Channel show Mythbusters documented their attempt to recreate an iRobot PackBot using stock components of the Vex Robotics Design System. Even though no one had any previous experience with the Radio Shack robotics kit, co-hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage together with …
Mar 18 2006
PinkTentacle.com reports today that the Pirkus-R Type-01 robot has recently had its facial recognition software updated. The upgrade addresses limitations that had often hindered recognition attempts by earlier models, including variations in lighting and positioning of the target subjects. Now Pirkus-R can track the location and orientation of its target and move itself into position …
Mar 15 2006
OK, the truth is that right now the RI-MAN humanoid robot can only carry your grandma if she weighs less than 26 pounds, and if she does, she’s got bigger problems than not being able to walk. (That’s a doll in the pic.) But the goal of RI-MAN’s creators is for him to be able …
Mar 13 2006
CeBIT 2006 is a little more than halfway over, and while there hasn’t been an overabundance of interesting news or products coming out of the Hanover, Germany technology show this year, Engadget.com did get a glimpse of NEC’s Partner-Type Personal Robot, PaPeRo.
Mar 13 2006
Robot snakes are nothing new, and although there are quite a few impressive models out there already, Engadget.com reported yesterday on the ACM-R5, an amphibious robosnake that out-snakes the rest of them. At a little over 6 feet long and weighing roughly 18 pounds, the ACM-R5 expertly mimics the movement of its biological counterpart both …
Mar 04 2006
Defense contractor Boston Dynamics has recently posted video of its BigDog four-legged robot pack mule in action. Funded by DARPA, BigDog is being developed for the US military to carry heavy gear for soldiers across terrain that is not suitable for vehicles. Measuring a little over 3 feet long by 2.5 feet high and weighing …
