tech e blog

Knife Blade Robot

This interesting robot -- from Robo-One 9 -- is equipped with two knife blades. Unfortunately, it's not battling against a comparable bot -- what a match it would've been.

"Still, it's not that unusual to find a Robo-One robot equipped with a couple of knife blades that scaled up to life size would be close to samurai sword length."

[Source]

NMX04-1A - The Giant Robot

Carlos Owen is currently building an 18-foot tall "Bipedal Exo-Skeletal Robotic Vehicle" called NMX04-1A. He plans on having a fully-functional prototype ready by next summer.

Initially our mechs will be used for entertainment purposes and will eventually be fitted to fight in a large arena designed to accommodate these great machines. The pilot control is a special system called mech interface manual integration control (mimic) system, designed specifically to allow the mech to emulate any movement done by the controlling pilot of the mecha

Tetra Vaal

What is so extraordinary about this video is not only their superb 3D rendering, shadows, dirt and the texture, but also a rather unusual context the whole action takes place in. [Source 1 - 2]

RuBot II

This follow up to the RuBot is the next-generation of Rubik's Cube solving robots. Plus, it even plays robotic sounds while solving the cube.

This is a great example of the excellent strength-to-weight ratio of pneumatic actuators. The motion is fairly fluid. Of course, were not getting to see the air pump, storage container, and the computing power behind the scene. It looks like the air valves are mounted to the shoulders and the drivers for the valves are in the chest. The human-shaped frame is built from common machine framing components

Robonova-1

This modified Robonova-1 is able to climb ropes, swing from trees, and perform a variety of other tricks.

"Matt Bauer took a standard Robonova-1 biped robot, taught it some neat karate and kung-fu moves, then hacked it to add grippers that could actually pickup objects like pencils from the floor."

[Source 1 via 2]