Microtransat Challenge

Ever Seen a Packbot Fly? Check this out!
Okay, so the video isn’t exactly “fresh” but the real news is that  iRobot recently kicked off a video channel on YouTube called iRobot iTube which I just read about on the ieee Spectrum site.

It's Official: Japan's Got a lot of Robots
Using data from the International Federation of Robotics and the International Labour Organization, the guys at ieee Spectrum Online put together a few visualizations that show what most suspect:  Japan’s got more industrial robots than anybody–10 times the world average and more than 3 times that of the US.

Robot Birds You Can Shoot Down Again and Again
WowWee’s been accelerating its pace of product releases since the release of ith the Rovio with a new projector technology, a new upcoming RoboSapien called “JoeBot” (which has some mixed reviews), and my favorite, a robot bird you can shoot down again and again with an accompanying laser gun.

Have you Seen This Robot?
A robot was stolen from a Portland State University professor’s car earlier this week and he wants it back–no questions asked.  The $5,000 robot was donated to the university by Parallax Incorporated.    Poor little guy.

Breakthrough: Tiny Fingers that Pinch
The biggest challenge nanotechnology is the mass-production of nano stuff. One-offs can be made but mass production is required to produce enough to make the technology practical or cheap.  In a recent breakthrough, Peter Bøggild and his colleagues from the Technical University of Denmark have created a gripper that could be used in nanoassembly. Previously, such grippers were too weak to be useful.

Ingenious Device lets Robots See Over Walls
Imagine a little box just 4 inches tall squirting out a rigid mast 8 feet straight up!    A configuration is available that will allow a larger unit that can lift 200lbs 20 feet.  The unit is from GeoSystems Inc and is called a Situational Awareness Mast (SAM).  Travis Deyle at Hizook brings several sources together to show us more about the device.