No, I don’t know what happened to the post from earlier today. But it had a clearly inferior cut of a match from several years before this one:
Now THIS is robot combat! (Yeah yeah, they’re still remote controlled…but c’mon, walking is still hard. They can doom us all later.)
Alright, enough videos–tomorrow marks the start of the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition season with their annual Kickoff telecast. FIRST hasn’t released details on how to watch online, but with local Kickoff events all over the place there might just be one near you. It’ll also be up on YouTube shortly after the telecast, if last year is any indication.
Time to find out what that hint means!
When people find out I build robots, the first question is “Do they fight each other?”
The second, almost always, is “Can you make me one that’ll get me a beer?”
This senior design project from the University of Central Florida uses an IR emitter (in the guy’s hand) and a mix of IR receivers and ultrasonic sensors to navigate the area around. Reportedly, there’s also a water gun as protection against people blocking the path. While undemonstrated in the video, you can spot the washer fluid reservoir they’re using for it.
What’s not to love?
When most folks think swerve drive, they’re thinking something bulky and big. Color me impressed with how compact this one was able to be!
Okay, okay, so Chinese New Year isn’t for another month or so. But you try to find something appropriate for today and tell me you’ve got better than a crew of dancing robots.
I now see why they cancelled America’s Best Dance Crew–because us humans got served.
Boston Dynamics (of BigDog fame) has the legs-in-the-real-world thing down. For reference, if you ran 28.3 miles per hour you would complete 100 meters in about 7.90 seconds. Usain Bolt’s world-record 100-meter run, admittedly from a standstill, is 9.58 seconds.
Now THIS is robot combat. It appears they’re still remote operated, but I think we would all give a walking robot more of a free pass than the average wedge.
Take one part useless machine, one part busted printer, and you get a useless machine that’s reached the next level.
(Via Hack A Day)
Somewhere in the above-linked image by illustrator Richard Sargent is everyone’s favorite trash compactor. I found him, but it took quite a bit of searching!
(Via MAKE)