Punxsutawney Phil
The animal rights group PETA says Punxsutawney Phil is being badly treated by the crowds and noise at the annual Groundhog Day festival on Feb. 2 and should be replaced with a robotic groundhog .
 

Rovers may have been able to endure life on Mars longer than anyone expected, but things could be more tricky for any sort of long-term exploration, where dust could cause equipment to grind to a halt or even pose a risk to human explorers. Some researchers from the University of Vermont now say they might [...]

Ya gotta be dreaming big…

For the discerning mad scientist: the list of items up for auction by the University of Delaware from a former Chrysler plant in Newark, Delaware. The university bought the plant after it closed, and apparently got the contents as well. The coolest items are probably the 6 axis robot arms, some [...]

Have A Synthetic Holiday Filled With Robotic Fun!

Can this get any stranger? Let’s just start with the story lead:
Inventor Le Trung spent Christmas Day with the most important woman in his life – his robot Aiko.
The science genius enjoyed a festive dinner with his mum, dad and his £30,000 fembot which he designed and built [...]

“News at Seven”
Personalized newscasts culled from the web and presented by digital avatars. Baseball stories written by computers using raw data.  Television anchors and sports reporters may not need to start looking for other jobs just yet but students and professors at Northwestern University are working to make this futuristic vision of news a reality.

A robot designed to help with the grocery shopping is being tested at a Kyoto-area supermarket.  The robotic assistant — an advanced version of the Robovie-II android developed by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) — is the centerpiece of a networked system of robots, sensors and digital technology designed to make shopping more convenient and [...]

The animatronic heads from artist Nathaniel Mellor are part of a $75,000 art piece on sale at Art Basel Miami Beach 2009. The artificial faces are controlled by servos which in turn are controlled by a computer.  For all audiophiles, this art installation is perhaps the scariest thing ever. Forget the musicians; this is too [...]

 Micro Miracle Bot?
A bunch of researchers from Japan’s University of Electro-Communications have conjured a mini robot which is capable of moving around freely within water and gas pipes as long as they measure 10cm or more in diameter. This robot will move about inside these pipes as long as they’re made out of iron, since [...]

Another standout at this week’s International Robot Exhibition 2009 in Tokyo is the Shadow Dextrous Hand along with the CyberGlove. The robotic hand can be operated remotely by a human wearing the sensor glove to perform actions as delicate as cradling an egg, changing a light bulb or writing with a pen.
 

Robots Come In All Shapes and Sizes These Days

Trust the savvy Japanese to make robots do everything; next we’ll have them making robots to make robots. But until they decide to make Terminators, it seems that we’ll have to make do with the Buckwheat Noodle Robot Sanuki Shokunin. The robot has been designed to crank [...]

ROAMS Robot uses off-the-shelf components to build 3D maps of an area
At a robotics conference, a vehicle called ROAMS demonstrated a cheap approach to mobile map-making. 
ROAMS (Remotely Operated and Autonomous Mapping System) was created by researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, with funding from the U.S. Army. It uses several existing [...]

 
Anybots “QA” at Work
Having one of those days where even a hearty bowl of Fruit Loops and Jack Daniels can’t get you out of bed? A telepresence robot can come into the office for you, elevating telecommuting to a decidedly new level. The somewhat humanoid ‘bots, produced by Mountain View, California-based Anybots, are controlled via [...]

David Bashford, lead of the LaserMotive team, preparing their robotic climber entry in the $2 million Space Elevator Games
A robot powered by a ground-based laser beam climbed a long cable dangling from a helicopter on Wednesday to qualify for prize money in a $2 million competition to test the potential reality of the science fiction [...]

Aida
As if you don’t have enough distractions while driving, the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s SENSEable City Lab have teamed up to create AIDA, a robot that lives in your dashboard, is way smarter than you, and has no compunctions about letting you know it: (Video)
 

ROPID
A new, even cuter, Japanese robot has hit the scene called ROPID. Developed by Tomotaka Takahashi of Robo Garage at Kyoto University, the tiny robot can respond to voice commands and actually has a mouth that moves when it speaks. (Video and pics)
 

RoboBee
Harvard researchers recently got a $10 million grant to create a colony of flying robotic bees, or RoboBees to among other things, spur innovation in ultra-low-power computing and electronic “smart” sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines.
 

Boston architects Howeler + Yoon and Los Angeles digital designers Squared Design Lab have designed a conceptual structure for Boston, where an unfinished building would be covered in modular pods growing algae for biofuel.  The pods would be continuously rearranged by robotic arms (powered by the micro-algae produced) to ensure the optimum growing conditions for [...]

This four-fingered robotic hand contains sensors that help it pick up a variety of objects
Industrial robots have been helping in the factories for a while, but most robots need a complex hand and powerful software to grasp ordinary objects without damaging them.  Researchers from Harvard and Yale Universities have developed a simple, soft robotic hand [...]

Stickybot has specially designed footpads, inspired by the surface of a gecko’s foot, that allow it to climb smooth surfaces.
To a robot designer like Sangbae Kim, the animal kingdom is full of inspiration. “I always look at animals and ask why they are the way they are,” says Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering [...]

Cyborg beetles are plain creepy
DARPA shows off its remote-controlled cyborg beetles

“Miruko,” a wearable eyeball-shaped robot with a built-in camera and wi-fi capabilities, is designed to augment human perception by sensing and reacting to objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye. (Video)

You can’t go anywhere these days without stepping on a robot.
Japan certainly hasn’t let the recession damp its enthusiasm for all things robot, even if much of the robotic workforce still suffers from unemployment idleness. The robot tiles emerged as the brainchild of Hiroo Iwata, a virtual reality researcher at the University of Tsukuba in [...]

Yaskawa Electric’s industrial robots in Tokyo, victims of the global recession.
Play a small violin for thousands of Japanese industrial robots which now stand silent, victims of the global economic downturn in a country that hosts the highest robot-to-human ratio.  Recession times have proved a harsh reality check for Japan’s ongoing love affair with robots. Novelty [...]

Return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize
Today, Team Selenokhod, a Russian group of engineers and managers, announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X PRIZE – a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch to the moon a privately [...]

The skinny little rider you see perched atop the back seat of this tandem is Joules, robot cyclist extraordinaire. He’s the creation of a guy called Chris who, challenged by his son to create an electric tandem that worked via pedal power, more than satisfied the brief.
The nuts-and-bolts robot is powered by a PMG-132 electric [...]