For those of you you are still battling winter and snow, we give you RoboPlow from IdeaLaboratories.
This awesome beast has a 50 inch blade, 6 wheels and 660 amps of power.
See our post from last year about a similar snow shoveling robot.
Tags: snow
Kevin Haw has hacked a Robosapien to do his bidding over the internet.
Utilizing an Arduino and an Ethernet shield in between, he can make the robot high five and whistle among other cool things.
Complete project page with code at Arduino.cc.
Tags: arduino, robosapien
YouTube poster robothut has created an amazing robot called Fire Chief from a Chief Smoky robot that actually sends smoke out of the fire hose nozzle.
So here is my version of the Fire Chief robot. The firs effect in the chest turned out very well, I used a rotating wrinkle foil drum that colored lights reflect off of just like the fake fire units do, but again the digital camera does not like to shoot in to the lit effect. The smoker hose effect turned out great! The tip of the hose is the smoke fluid cartridge so if need be it can be replaced , the hearter is on the end of the hose and the power to the heater runs inside the hose. The hose is fed air buy a small air pump that came from a junked out blood pressure machine.
Great job robothut! Click through for a short video.
Tags: hack
Using swarm robotics as a starting point, Julia Tsao has created a robotic pixel system called Curious Displays. This system is her graduate thesis project from last fall at the Art Center College of Design.
Curious Displays is a product proposal for a new platform for display technology. Instead of a fixed form factor screen, the display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½ inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface. The blocks operate independently of one another, but are aware of the position and role relative to the rest of the system. With this awareness, the blocks are able to coordinate with the other blocks to reconfigure their positioning to form larger display surfaces and forms depending on purpose and function. In this way, the blocks become a physical embodiment of digital media, and act as a vehicle for the physical manifestation of what typically exists only in the virtual space of the screen.
Huh? Yeah, we thought the same thing, so click through for the video where robots tell you to pick up your dirty underwear amongst other cool things.
Link via (Boing Boing) (more…)
University of Arizona student Matt Bunting has created a cool hexabot that looks like a spider. The robot also landed him a job offer and an order for two of the robots. Making robots can be fun and rewarding.
Every time the robot is turned on, it must learn again how to walk. If a particular movement moves it forward, then that movement is reinforced. This allows the robot to learn instead of using pre-programmed behavior. This also allows the robot to adapt if it gets damaged or loses a leg. The robot also uses a webcam to aid in navigation.
Stewart Christie at Intel liked the robot because it uses the Intel Atom processor. Intel ordered two robots and plans on using one in live demos.
Click through for a video of the spiderbot in action.
Tags: hexabot, robot, spider, university of arizona
