Assembly docs are coming together. I'm going to have to disassemble the XY assembly and reshoot some of the pictures, though; I have the Y stage on backwards in some of the images. I hate taking apart a working robot.

The prototype Cupcake CNC robot lives! Cupcake is a small, relatively cheap hackable CNC platform. It's designed to accept a number of toolheads-- so far we have an ABS extruder and frosting extruder prototyped (yes, you can decorate cakes with it). If we seem a little woozy in the video, it's because we filmed it at two in the morning, after getting the first successful build running.

We're selling the Cupcake as a complete kit through Makerbot Industries, accepting preorders today. You can also get just the electronics, individual servos, etc.

Whew. Now to sleep for about sixteen hours.

In this troubling economy, who has the resources to build a hexapod? Thus, I'm building a pentapod-- the people's robot.

The skeleton is up on thingiverse. I'm using one of Raph's awesome, hacked-up twitchie boards to carry the chip. Some observations so far: I need a shorter thigh member, and I'm going to need more powerful servos for those joints-- hs-311s aren't cutting it.

Reminder: robot workshop tonight, at Eyebeam, for those of you in NYC.

Mindstorms Workshop - This workshop, intended for ages 12 and up, will teach participants of all ages how to build and program their own robots using LEGO Mindstorms (small computers with programmable behaviors) in order to address a specific challenge. Participants will work with an artist to learn the Mindstorm programming language, experiment with the design of a physical computing project, and test the results in their own mini-robot "runway show".

Feral Robotic Dogs - The Bureau of Inverse Technology will lead a workshop on building feral robotic dogs. These semi-autonomous activist robots are created by disassembling and rebuilding commercially available robotic toy dogs. The toys are 'upgraded' by installing a new nose (data collection sensors), a new brain that programs the dogs to "sniff out" contaminants in the environment and by mechanically improving them so that they can traverse outdoor terrain.

New York-Tokyo robots tomorrow at the same venue, followed by a robot-DJ'ed party.

simonthehappy: this is creepily similar to what I'm working on, only I'm only dragging the paper in one direction, and using several head positioning assemblies from hard drives to actuate the pen...