Joseph Schlesinger has been working on bringing affordable robotics kits to people everywhere. His highly successful kickstarter for the project quickly gained popularity and catapulted Hexy, the small, cute hexapod robot into the spotlight. Though the robot has little practical application, at $200 it is a great introduction to robotics for kids and hobbyists http://www.viddler.com/v/cb63d93f?secret=84792220 […]
In an effort to better understand and model the kinds of movements and forces exerted by olympic swimmers have developed a half scale humanoid robot. The 3D printed bot mimics the arm and leg strokes of a swimmer. The robot can’t swim anywhere near as quickly as a human can. Yet… Humanoid robots are in […]
This interesting little robot is trying to overcome one of the biggest challenges of bipedal robots, keeping the system stable. The team at the University of Notre Dame is expoloring this challenge by using their robot KURMET for investigating non-steady-state dynamic maneuvers such as jumping. Legged robots offer advantages in terms of mobility over uneven terrain and, […]
“!Hop” is a toy robot that can hop. It uses two independently actuated arms in order to simultaneously hop and balance in the lateral plane. The “sagittal” plane is stabilized by torque applied to the two drive wheels (note that the wheels are, for the most part, stationary due to the lack of disturbances about […]
The title may be a little misleading, while this robot does make sushi, it is in fact a complex robotic hand with interesting technology to actuate it. Skip to the middle to see the pneumatic actuators for the finder tips. The bladders are inflated and deflated to provide the actuation needed to grasp the delicate food without crushing […]
Cars can drive in forward and backwards. This robot can drive sideways, while sitting on top of a round ball. The concept of a “ball drive” to move a vehicle has been explored many times due to the advantages of being able to drive in any direction at “full speed” and being able to change […]
Alright, maybe I exaggerated a little when I said “robotic spider.” This spider is more of a robotic arm, but that doesn’t make the feat of weaving a web any less impressive. MIT’s Media Lab is developing a robot that is weaving a cocoon-like structure with a little programming help from humans. Eventually it will be autonomous Right […]
