Few Wall-E Lego creations recreate both the cuteness and the basic functionality of the lovable bot as authentically as this one does. It was programmed using Lego Mindstorms and can transform itself into a box, pick up and carry objects, look up and down, and even utter and respond to sounds. It can be controlled remotely or it can do things by itself.
It is simply…adorable. Videos below.
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Want to play chess with your friend who’s halfway around the world? You could do that online, but what if you want to use a real chess board? With this DIY chess robot, you can do just that.
This robot can move the chess pieces around the board and is able to rotate the board up to 180 degrees, moving the pieces within reach of the robotic arm. With this as your arm, you’ll be able to play chess using a social networking service, and the moves that your friend makes will be replicated on your chess board. You can also hook it up to chess playing software if you are by yourself and play against it.
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Google’s Android mascot is the most adorable robot mascot ever. But you’ve never seen him like this before. The hardware was made by Reo Matsumura, and Hideyuki Takei was behind the software which sends the commands to the robot from an Android phone over Bluetooth.
Monster Chess may be the best chess set ever made. This set took 4 geeks over a year to make and they used $30,000 worth of LEGO bricks. It’s a beautiful thing to watch in action. In a few years all chess sets will probably be like this one. You can see the 156 square foot Monster Chess set in person, if you are at Brickworld in Chicago next week. Awesome!
This home-made Butlerbot goes by the very appropriate name of Belvedere. It was created for the 1st birthday of its creator’s son, Ethan. Sounds like the beginning of a pilot for a whacky sitcom to me. Belvedere is all about serving drinks and entertaining guests.
He’s based on the iRobot Create platform, so he’s smart enough to avoid obstacles. But he can also tell jokes, dance, and can drive himself to pre-programmed locations in the house. There’s also the spinning bow tie which is a must for butlerbots. Video below.
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Apparently it’s Daggit day here at Botropolis. This is an amazing built from scratch replica of the Daggit from the original BSG. Not only does it look awesome and authentic, but that BSG theme music you hear is coming directly from the beast. That’s because this is an i-daggit. Yes, a Daggit ipod dock.
The quality is amazing. This guy did a great job.
Introduce your kids to solar technology at an early age with this robot kit. It comes with enough parts to build one of three different robot designs, which include your traditional robot, a scorpion and a tank. Each is motorized and solar powered.
Only $14.58. Your kids will learn something as they have fun building bots.
Microsoft’s Robotics Developer Studio package of programming and design tools has not been as wildly popular as the company had hoped. So in a move to expand the user base and drum up some interest, the company is now making the RDS available as a free download.
“We decided to take out all of the barriers that today our users might have in order to help them build these new technologies,” Stathis Papaefstathiou, the head of the robotics studio, told IEEE Spectrum. This should plese DIY robotics enthusiasts everywhere.
Inkjet printers produce images using thousands of tiny ink dots. But what if a printer could use a paintball gun and color pellets? That’s exactly what the Facadeprinter is. A smallish robot that makes giant printouts.
Invented by designers Martin Fussenegger and Michael Sebastian Haas and engineer Julian Adenauer, this software-controlled robot shoots art onto walls or other surfaces. It can be used for more than just fun though. Imagine Facadeprinter in disaster relief efforts, where symbols for medical facilities, fresh water, danger zones, etc could be quickly created.
The printhead is a modified paintball marker mounted on a two-axis turntable, which comes with a touch screen for operation control and a USB port for file input. The only other components needed are a ball tower for holding the pellets and a cylinder of compressed air.
It can create a “printout” that’s about 26 feet tall from a distance of about 40 feet away.
Papercraft robots are a great alternative to collecting expensive robot action figures. Plus when you’ve completed a papercraft project, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Papercraft robots can be found all over the Internet and are fun for kids and adults alike. Here, we have gathered together fifty that we think are awesome. Enjoy.
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 Robots are a fact of life. Soon they will kill us. We’d like to document the coming apocalypse. |
