More swarmbots

Nice video of various animal inspired robots, the last one is not so much animal as it is collective mind inspired.

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

A BBC News crew went to Germany to try ’s Baggers, the robotized, fully automated restaurant in which there’s not a single waiter in sight and plates float over your head on steel rails to reach your seat, Futurama-style. And apparently, they loved it.

Fully Automated Robo-Restaurant Tested (Verdict: Delicious, Fun, No Bloody Tips)

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 [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

Good news robotics freaks! Today NASA JPL released a version of their robotics framework for the public.
CLARAty is the Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy. The first release of its software, version 0.10-beta, is now available publicly at http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov.

CLARAty is an integrated framework for reusable robotic software. It defines interfaces for common [...]

It seems The Droid Builders Network has gotten new neighbors. Some brave builders thought it would be cool to buy the DroidBuilders.com domain and put up a forum for Droid Building.. wooohoo! (Attack of the clones!!) - Can’t say my first reaction was a good one, but I’m also realizing that they will probably just [...]