Meet Exuro, The Arduino-Brained Kinect-Tracking Flame-Shooting Bot
The robot Exuro is driven with Python, controlled with Arduino, tracking with Kinect, and best of all shoots fire every time someone donates to The Crucible in Oakland, CA.
Robotics
Octopus Soft-Robot Tentacle, Suckers!
Everyone loves a soft robot, and I’m fond of the marine variety. This bioinspired prototype tentacle, made of silicone rubber, not only curls and extends in eerily squidlike fashion, it’s also got pressure sensors embedded beneath its suckers so it can grasp objects, like a cephalopod should.
New in the Maker Shed: Arduino Motor Shield
If you’re planning to build a robot with an Arduino, you’ll likely need a motor shield to drive your motors! The Official Arduino Motor Shield, now available in the Maker Shed fits right on top of your Arduino Uno (or compatible) microcontroller and uses a full-bridge L298 driver to provide 2 channels with 5-12V at 2 amps per channel.
FTCquel: Mark Edelman (video)
Mark Edelman from NorCalFTC shows the competition area for a yearly teen program in robotics. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, student teams used their engineering and technology skills to pit their creations against one another in the final tech challenge.
A Peek Inside an Animatronic Display Workshop
If you’ve ever walked along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan during the holiday season, no doubt you’ve seen the incredible animatronic store displays in the windows of stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman. In this excellent video, Cool Hunting interviews Lou Nasti, the animatronic mastermind behind many of these displays. Lou is the owner […]
EconoSpazzi Robot
Andrew Terranova from Let’s Make Robots mods the Spazzi Robot project from MAKE 27 to use less expensive solenoids. He calls it the EconoSpazzi.
The Arduino Library Grows by One
More and more books keep being released about our favorite little microcontroller, the Arduino. Apress offers a new one tomorrow entitled Arduino Robotics. Written by Josh Adams, John-David Warren, and Harald Molle, it’s is a monster 628 pages…