Droid Builders Net

Check out this cool and rather funny demonstration of a modular robot reassembling itself upon being kicked by an evil human.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a “monstrous” two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed.

Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts, who are scheduled to blast off in the wee hours of Tuesday, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight.

They’re also delivering the first piece of Japan’s massive Kibo space station lab, a float-in closet for storing tools, experiments and spare parts. For the first time, each of the five major international space station partners will own a piece of the real estate.

• Wired News: Astronauts Will Assemble Robot in Space

“The way water striders walk on water was discovered years ago. The insect uses its long legs to help evenly distribute its tiny body weight. The weight is distributed over a large area so that the fragile skin formed by surface tension supports the bug on the water. However, the ability of water striders to jump onto water without sinking has baffled scientists, until now.”

• Slashdot | Robots That Bounce on Water

“There is a quite an interesting human size robot that comes from UAE, REEM-A. It has some interesting skills as dynamic walking (of course), object recognition, voice recognition, self localization and mapping, long battery life and face recognition. Recently, the development team announced that the second prototype, REEM-B, will be presented in February 2008. The second prototype has many improvements: a fingered hand with 12 motors, the ability to go up and down stairs, additional force sensors on the arms, ultrasonic range finders to avoid obstacles and a completely new look.”

• Slashdot | REEM-B, New Humanoid Robot Announced

Pretty cool Gundam Mech dude.

• GUNDAM CRISIS attraction opens up, fanboys unite – Engadget

Say hello to RoboCup’s tiny competitors, the NanoCup!

“A total of five teams from North America and Switzerland built microscopic competitors that were around “six times smaller than an amoeba and weighed no more than a few hundred nanograms.” The wee devices showed their stuff in the oh-so-fascinating Nano Cup soccer match, which had to be projected onto a screen in order for anyone to actually take a look at the action.”

• Microscopic robots get their game on at RoboCup – Engadget

“The 2007 installment of RoboCup has begun; individual events opened to the public today. RoboCup is an international robotics symposium and competition whose goal is to advance the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to the point that in 2050 a robot soccer team can defeat the human world champions. This year, RoboCup is located on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, GA, marking the first time a university is hosting it and only the second time since it began in 1993 that it is located in the United States.”

• Slashdot | RoboCup 2007 Opens At Georgia Tech

I met Jed Berk and his wicked Blubber Bots at the Reboot 2007 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Had good fun interactig with them via bluetooth and touch. It’s amazing how quickly you begin to relate to these machines as “living” entities.

According to creator Jed Berk (who will also help save your pet from drowning), Blubber Bots, or ALAVs (Autonomous Lighter than Air Vehicles) just want to party with you, and maybe eat a little something while they’re at it. These helium filled fliers contain SunSPOT CPUs, which control the bots and allow them to respond to various stimuli such as movement, sound, light and heat. The floating blobs are also able to interact via “conversations” with cell phone signals, follow “food”, and can bellow to one another using high frequency vibration. Best of all, these odd little fellows can be yours to own for $100; just make sure you have enough time and energy to care for them — like sea monkies.

• Blubber Bots float, feed, and make friends – Engadget

I am extremely excited to break even more good news today; Pleo pre-orders started today!!

After quickly converting the dollar price to danish kroner (DKK) I immediate went to order it, BAM!!! I was hit by a brick in the head, when reading this:

We ship to addresses in the United States.

Oh no!! Pleo is hatching but he can’t swim yet, thus it would not be safe to make him swim that long way across the ocean to Europe. Now once again, ill go to sleep crying for six months.. But stay put Pleo, I’ll be waiting by the beach when you finally arrive!

UPDATE: I got this response from Ugobe support, not much — but something;

“At this time, UGOBE is only taking pre-orders for addresses in the United States. UGOBE’s distributor for Denmark is Top Toy. Please contact them for information on ordering Pleo in your country.”

• PleoWorld