Making a robot can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s the perfect combination of creativity, engineering and problem solving. However, if you’re just getting started in robotics, it can also be overwhelming. To make things easier for those who are just starting out, we’ve put together some tips and tricks to help makers bring robots to life! From the basics of assembling your robot to software implementation, these pointers will give you everything you need to get started on your robotic adventure!
Creepy-cool snakey water robot goodness. Not much info about the maker, here; all I know is that the video was taken at the Odense RoboDays festival in the summer of 2007. If you know whodunnit, feel free to enlighten us in the comments. [via Boing Boing]
It’s tin that’s been etched with a focused ion beam (FIB) instrument, with bits ion-welded platinum for the nose and to hold the tin spheres together. I guess it’s impractical to work with actual ice when you’re at the 10 micrometer scale. A human hair is about 50 micrometers across. It’s the work of Dr. David Cox and co-workers at the National Physical Laboratory in London.
Keanu Reeves doing a public service announcement for FIRST robotics. Wait a minute, should Neo be a spokesperson for robots/AI? [via Robots Dreams] FIRST
I love these swarm robots and the relative simplicity of the design, the means on motility (BEAM-style direct-drive pager motors), and the charging scheme (the bots in the lower image, to the right, are at the charging rail). The wiki that’s been set up doesn’t have too much info yet. There’s even going to be […]
Need to build a custom rotary encoder wheel for that precision motion device you are making? Well, Nick Ames has you covered with his encoder wheel generator script.
Inspired by Claude Shannon’s Ultimate Machine, Instructables user SaskView designed this excellent most useless machine.
In November, I had the opportunity to travel to Seattle for a Magic: The Gathering tournament. While I was there, I visited the headquarters of TwinTech, a small company run by identical twin brothers, Steve and Chris Burrows, who manufacture a small rack-building set called MicroRAX. At the time, a similar set, called MakerBeam, was […]
