Random Robot Roundup

Posted 16 Jul 2008 at 16:35 UTC by steve

The robot stories have been piling up, so it will probably take a couple of robot roundups this week to get caught up! In the last roundup, we mentioned the robot page embedded in the new Firefox 3 browser. Rog-a-Matic noticed that Firefox fans in San Francisco built a giant robot in Dolores Park to celebrate the launch of the browser. Several readers sent links to Nuvations air hockey robot. The Swirling Brain has swirled up a stories about orbiting robots that could repair satellites, the coming android apocalypse, the almost as deadly pet-vs-robot wars, the new Kiva robots that Zappos.com is using in their warehouse, a speech implant that turns thoughts into words, defense department interest in neural nets, and a robot arm that surfs the web all day and diggs stories (or maybe it's hoax). Roland Piquepaille has been busy as well, reporting on the use of facial recognition used for remote control and the history of bilateral teleoperation. And two last items that are not exactly robots but still cool: first a gyroscopically stabilized cross between a unicycle, a motorcycle, and a segway and second, photos of university team solar vehicles being prepped for the North American Solar Challenge rally. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.