Offroad autonomous robots seem to be all the rage lately, so another one isn't exactly unique: but this one is, first, built out of RC parts, making it a lot cheaper than most. And second, the thing can climb stairs -- which is still pretty unique among robots. All in all, it's a very cool robot.

• Jumping robot. Something about "jumping robots" must attract people. It's in video games, it's in cartoons, and now, it's a proposal. Assuming the translation is OK, it's a proposal for a "kick-leg" which pops out during the robot's rotation. The robot's purpose seems to be to avoid obstacles, but who knows.


• China announced in a weird, propagandistic way that they've developed a spherical robot. The Swedes also have a spherical robot, first reported on in February.


• Gizmodo mentions that the big brouhaha over the Repliee Q1 lately is odd, considering it's six years old. Anyone else feeling a little behind?


• And, someone's gotten a patent for robot mission planning, which should be a patent like the certificate I got for guessing most beans in a jar should be a PhD.

It's like a creep movie... if you wander around the room her eyes follow you... as does the body, and the rest. Yep, it's a kids toy, complete with facial recognition, object recognition, evidentially some PDA functionality, and frankly, a creepy look that reminds me of Children of the Corn. Which then goes to ask: why on earth do we go to the trouble of building something with so many close relations to human beings, but forget to leave off the crap we hate about humans?

When just "marital aids" won't do. Actually, it's an article on the DaVinci robot surgeon, plastered all over the net earlier this month. The surgeon has specialized, and is now being used for prostrate surgery. Yep, you too can get your happy place operated on by a machine built by people who tend to find bugs by letting the thing run first. Yeah, that should take the wind out of your windsock.

Now, how cool is this? What got me started in this whole mess is that I wanted to build an articulated hand, but never could figure out how to do this without a whole hell of a lot of pneumatics -- something that's absolutely a pain to use with Mindstorms, because getting the pieces are annoying and expensive. Now, along comes an under-actuated hand, built using Legos. It's not fully articulated, but it's interesting to see how the builder used not pneumatics for the whole thing, but only 3 pneumatics for controlling the grip.

Yeah, the makers of the most popular home robot in existence right now are going public. The API is swell, but do you really think that stockholders will let you play with such cool things as the Packbot? No. Petty jealousy because I couldn't get into an IPO without holding the owner's pet Roomba hostage? Absolutely. And if I don't, the moving hoover gets it. Yeah, yeah, you can listen to it on Marketplace as well.

A little late -- or very early. As reported in April, Abu Dhabi started using robot camel jockeys this month. Nothing good to be said about robot camel jockeys, except that replacing live child jockeys will save a few kids from flaming deaths in those wild camel crashes. Yes, the amazing advances robots are making: in the last 75 years, from an idea in a science fiction story to vacuums and camel jockeys.

Make posted the specs and details via a PDF for building a Mousey the Junkbot mouse-based robot. This was in Make #2 -- a robot-heavy edition, which is well worth getting (heck the whole magazine is a great one, but that one is especially good for robotics junkies) -- and the PDF that they put up contains detailed instructions on how to build a light-sensitive robot using a mouse case and some fairly simple installation proceedures. "Simple", meaning 14 pages of instructions, 18 multi-part steps.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Neat bot creating by someone at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; it has 22 degrees of movement, stereovision, a neural network, can speak and has facial recognition and tracking. Also, it appears it can go to the bathroom reading Make.

We talked about the flying swarms subject a little while back, but it seems that a professor at the University of Essex teaches a class called "Biologically Inspired Robotics", which covers flying swarms, humanoid robotics, Machine Consciousness and "Extended Particle Swarm Optimisation", the last of which has me practically drooling. If anyone's taking this class, please please give a shout.

Looks like someone had just one too many robot music videos this week. The link lists several videos containing, surrounding, or about robots and music. Included are

• What's Your Name
• One about a worker who doesn't know he's a robot
• One about a worker haunted by robots
• A non-musical short about a robot cop in a third-world nation

This made the rounds late last week, but since it's in Georgia, and it's about robotics, well, I'm giving myself license to do a "me too" post and take a look at this pretty neat project. It's a combination of a MIDI sequencer and a series of mechanical solenoids, levers, "pluckers" and "fingertips" which, when pressed in combination, make the guitar emit sound. The MIDI sequence is fed into a microcontroller, which then is used to press or pluck as needed. The mechanical, electrical, and code explanations are off of the web site, and an interesting read. Worth a check.

Now how's this for impressive? Carnegie Mellon's robot for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was put to a test run, and went 200 miles in seven hours without a driver. Speaks volumes about this year's entries, really -- from a "no one finished" to a real race in only a couple of years is downright astounding.

The drive was an endurance evaluation for the robot's computers, sensors and mechanical systems. The machine averaged 28 miles per hour and hit a top speed of 36 miles per hour to complete its 7-hour, 200-mile marathon.

This story was fascinating. During the 2003 Baseball season, Steve Bartman caught a ball and gained a run for the opposing team, keeping the Cubs once again from the World Series. Suddenly a pariah in Chicago -- and reviled and tortured by Cubs fans -- he basically disappeared from view. In this article, an ESPN reporter goes in search of Steve Bartman, and finds him...

"Steve," I tell him, "I've got one thing before I leave. Regardless of what I do for a living, regardless of the way this all might seem to you, I want to apologize. I want to genuinely apologize, on behalf of all Cub fans, for all the crap you've had to deal with.

"I think it could have been any one of us. And I truly wish you the best. I truly hope you're able to move on and live a happy and prosperous life."

Oh, this is just funny. An article on News.com mentions that Wal-mart seems to be investing in robotics... which then prompted the following interesting exchange:

As soon as I mentioned robots, Gallagher seemed eager to end the call. "We are not looking into robots in any way, shape or form," she said abruptly. I tried probing for more, but she had nothing further to offer.

Which, of course, leads me to a very nasty thought. I say... go into your local Wal-mart and complain to the manager that you don't want Wal-mart to bring robots in to work at the place. Seriously. Walk into your local Wal-mart, and tell the manager you don't want them to bring robots in to work at Wal-mart.