A Review of the Best Robots of 2008 :: Singularity Hub
http://singularityhub.com/2009/01/12/a-review-of-the-best-robots-of-2008/

a lot of these i've seen before, but its pretty awe-inspiring to see them one after another...plus the comments have a bunch more!

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so.

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so. This review is heavily slanted to consumer robots and research robots. Perhaps in the future we can do a review of industrial robots. Given the sheer number of robots that are out there we know there will be several excellent robots that we have overlooked in this review. If you know of any really awesome robots or robot videos that we have missed please let us know and we will consider adding them to this post. So without further delay, lets take a look at some of the best robots and robot videos of 2008 (maybe some are from 2007 too), broken down by category: January 12th, 2009 | Published by Keith Kleiner in robotics

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos of the last year or so. (Singularity Hub)

The Teensy is a complete USB-based microcontoller development system, featuring a 16 MHz AVR (AT90USB162) processor, in a very small footprint! All programming is done via the USB port. No special programmer is needed, only a standard "Mini-B" USB cable and a PC or Macintosh with a USB port.

Next time you order a new pair of skinny jeans from Gap.com, you should know that you are helping welcome in the hive-mind robot overlords of retail. Warehouses run by

Boom. Now we begin. Watch the video.

save

check out pic #16... amazing

Best. Art. Evar.

The tweenbot, a cardboard-bodied, cheerful little bugger, is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. Since it can only move forward, it depends on the kindness of strangers to guide it and remove obstacles.

This project took 18 days from this Russian guy to accomplish. It all has began after he has watched that cartoon. An idea sparked thru his hea

This project took 18 days from this Russian guy to accomplish. It all has began after he has watched that cartoon. An idea sparked thru his head “I want to build such thing to hold my comp

Videos of the Ishikawa Komuro Lab's high-speed robot hand performing impressive acts of dexterity and skillful manipulation. However, the video being passed around is slight on details. Meanwhile, their video presentation at ICRA 2009 (which took place in May in Kobe, Japan) has an informative narration and demonstrates additional capabilities. I have included this video below, which shows the manipulator dribbling a ping-pong ball, spinning a pen, throwing a ball, tying knots, grasping a grain of rice with tweezers, and tossing / re-grasping a cellphone!

High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation

A High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation.

The tweezer grasp is great.

سیستم کنترلی پهپاد

Paparazzi is a free and open-source hardware and software project intended to create an exceptionally powerful and versatile autopilot system by allowing and encouraging input from the community. The project includes not only the airborne hardware and software, from voltage regulators and GPS receivers to Kalman filtering code, but also a powerful and ever-expanding array of ground hardware and software including modems, antennas, and a highly evolved user-friendly ground control software interface.

Another amateur UAV site. This thing has already happened.

I haven't read this yet.

As low as $1k, still out of my hobby budget.

SHE is the perfect wife, with the body of a Page 3 pin-up and housekeeping skills that put TV's Kim and Aggie to shame. Her name is Aiko, she can even read a map, and will never, ever, nag. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't she fellas? And she is. Aiko is actually a robot, a fantasy brought to life by inventor Le Trung.

mr universe would understand

SHE is the perfect wife, with the body of a Page 3 pin-up and housekeeping skills that put TV’s Kim and Aggie to shame.

I guess the motivation is questionable. However, it shows that robotic companions are not so far out in the future. And the more human those robotic companions can behave and communicate, the more intuitive the human-robot interaction will be, thus eliminating the need for extensive training or manual reading and giving a broader public access to such anthropomorphic computing interfaces.

speaks 13,000 sentences

josh

Cool long exposure pic of a roomba at work: http://tr.im/kXZR [from http://twitter.com/Underdown/statuses/1754570336]

RT @bfeld: Retweeting @bwyman: Awesome long-exposure shot of a Roomba in action. http://is.gd/xRWe [from http://twitter.com/pkedrosky/statuses/1747586393]

Kenji the robot fixates on human tech and has to be turned off. Repeatedly.

http://gizmodo.com/5164841/robot-programmed-to-love-traps-woman-in-lab-hugs-her-repeatedly

robot asesino

Digital Storage Oscilloscope

Why Did M.I.T. Switch from Scheme to Python?

The freshman software engineering course (...) is now nearly thirty years old. Engineering has changed quite a lot in thirty years. Since 1995, Gerry and his co-author Prof. Hal Abelson have advocated changing the freshman curriculum radically, not basing it on SICP. In 1980, computer engineering was based on starting with clearly-defined things (primitives or small programs) and using them to build larger things that ended up being clearly-defined. Composition of these fragments was the name of the game. However, nowadays, a real engineer is given a big software library, with a 300-page manual that’s full of errors. He’s also given a robot, whose exact behavior is extremely hard to characterize (what happens when a wheel slips?).

"In 1980, computer engineering was based on starting with clearly-defined things (primitives or small programs) and using them to build larger things that ended up being clearly-defined. Composition of these fragments was the name of the game... Nowadays, a real engineer is given a big software library, with a 300-page manual that’s full of errors. He’s also given a robot, whose exact behavior is extremely hard to characterize (what happens when a wheel slips?). The engineer must learn to perform scientific experiments to find out how the software and hardware actually work, at least enough to accomplish the job at hand. We may not like it this way (”because we’re old fogies”), but that’s the way it is..."

Dan Weinreb’s blog » Blog Archive » Why Did M.I.T. Switch from Scheme to Python?

Some explanation of why MIT switched from Scheme to Python.

RT @catenary: Amazing agile little robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQsRPJ1dYw

Cool dog like robot that walks on all fours, very cool.

This is awesome, but the problem remains that it reminds me that Skynet is possible. http://bit.ly/bTlRBD