robogames 2007

Here's the winners of the 2007 Robogames held in San Francisco a few months ago. The US took home the gold in both Middle and Heavy Weight Kung Fu Combat, and the Stair Climbing competitions. Japan won for Acrobatics and the Biped Race events.

Many thanks to Matt Bauer for this awesome video of some of the best fights.

new humanoid kit: GR-001 from HPI

Our friends over at Robots-dreams.com have gotten a sneak peek at HPI's newest humanoid, the GR-001. Below are some links for the kit and controller, as well as the software they are designing for it.

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2007/02/new_hpi_grobots.html

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2007/02/exclusive_softw.html

And here's a nice video of it in action...

how-to: homemade solar panel

All you need is a tin oxide electrode, a graphite electrode, some nanocrystalline titanium dioxide, and... raspberries??? These are actually really easy to make and are the latest fad in biological solar power relying on the photosynthetic/chemical properties of berry juice and titanium oxide.

This tutorial shows you exactly how to do it , so does this one based on a kit, and so does this one, and this one explains how the whole thing works.

Here's a couple variations that are more electrochemical in nature (1) (2) using cupric oxide and saltwater.

roboquad

There's been a lot of press about the latest robot from WowWee toys, a quadruped called Roboquad that sells for about $100 US. Here's a link to the best review I've found so far.

There are a ton of roboquad videos here but here's one of the most popular ones from CES earlier this year:

iRobot "create"...

...makes a nice platform for your robot projects. If you have a Roomba then this is the same thing minus the vacuum parts.





Leam more about this on Gizmodo.

how-to: vibrobot

It's been a while since my last post but I have a bunch of goodies saved up now that work has slowed down. For instance, take this awesome tutorial on building a "vibrobot" - a BEAM bot that uses a simple vibrating motor that shakes its way around. http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/01/how_to_build_be.html

And for more info on BEAM check out some of my earlier posts on this very site, OR go here for a brief but thorough explanation.