Random Robot Roundup

Posted 8 Oct 2008 at 18:42 UTC by steve

The folks at Trossen Robotics say, "It's time again to officially announce the next round of the Trossen Robotics Community (TRC) Project Contest. With the success of last round, it was obvious many preferred the idea of offering Robots as prizes, so we're doing it again:-)". Andrew Alter of Trossen wrote to tell us about another new project they're working on: I’m spearheading a new type of humanoid combat competition for Robogames 2009 called Mech Wars (think small scale R/C MechWarrior with airsoft weapons and wireless cameras for piloting). The participants are building away trying to get their robots finished, but we have some pretty solid progress and some cool looking bots on the rise. Roschler noted that, a brand new solid review by one of the first Rovio owners has just been posted by Robots-Dreams.com. The Swirling Brain pointed out yet another story on rat brained robots, this time a NewScientist Tech article about a car navigation system inspired by rat brains. He also noticed a ZDNet article on an MIT underwater robot that moves like a helicopter. Even cooler is the UPenn robot that can resassemble itself if you kick it apart. The Brain also reported a Popular Science story about inflatable surveillance robot for Mars. Roland Piquepaille let us know about his latest blog posts on space robots, pterodactyl-inspired flying robots, and on the new MIT underwater robot that the Swirling Brain mentioned. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.