From: LINK
From: http://geekbeat.tv/aquabots-are-hexbugs-that-learned-to-swim/
Just because we’re headed toward an inevitable war with the robots, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun along the way. We’ve told you about Hexbugs before – now they’re taking to the water, ready to inhabit a fish bowl near you.
Aquabots, the aquatic variant of Hexbugs, are available in either shark or clown fish varieties and in ten colors. Driven by electro-magnetic propulsion, they start swimming when they come in contact with water. These little guys are almost eerie in how well they mimic actually fish movements. The perfect solution for the person who wants a fish on their desk but just knows they’ll forget to feed it.
[I tried to find them online – I guess they are “Coming Soon” because I had no luck]
Just found this link http://kipr.org/gcer about a Global Conference on Educational Robotics and thought I would share it.
From: IEEE Spectrum
By Evan Ackerman
Posted 22 Jul 2013 | 14:28 GMT
The typical approach to adding actuated joints and additional degrees of freedom to a robot is slapping additional servos and motors on there. And that’s fine, except that it adds weight and cost and complexity. A little bit of cleverness with gears can go a very long way, and Disney Research has developed a new rapid design tool that can create sophisticated mechatronics that operate with just one motor.
Disney designed ten animated characters with this system, and manufactured seven of them, and in each case, getting the character to do what they wanted it to do took less than half an hour. All of the parts involved can be 3D printed, too, which makes us think that it might be a lot of fun for Disney to release this too into the wild and let people make their own characters with it. But before they do, there some additional capabilities in the works:
Our characters are currently restricted to cyclic motions,” said Stelian Coros, an associate research scientist at Disney Research, Zürich. “However, our research brings us one step closer to the rapid design and manufacture of customized robots that can sense and interact with their environments to carry out complex tasks.
More info at: Disney Research
From: Gizmodo
From: Gigaom.com
From: The Huffington Post
From: Movie Mom
by Nell Minow
Did you know that the word “robot” was invented by Czech writer Karl Capek for a play produced in 1920 called R.U.R?
In honor of today’s release of “Pacific Rim,” take a look at some of the other great movie robots:
Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang’s classic dystopian tale (it inspired a memorable Apple commercial) is the story of a revolt against the 1%. It has been beautifully restored to included scenes originally cut by censors.
Forbidden Planet (1956)
The first major studio sci-fi feature film was inspired in part by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” The scientist played by Walter Pigeon has a sidekick, Robby the Robot.
Robots (2005)
This adorable animated film stars Ewan McGregor in a story of (literally) scrappy outsiders in an entire civilization of robots
The Iron Giant (1999)
This animated story about a boy who befriends a weaponized robot is a heartwarming gem, inspired by the work of poet Ted Hughes.
Wall•E (2008)
This love story between an analog trash-collecting robot with a fondness for “Hello Dolly” and a sleek digital robot designed to seek out signs of new life is one of Pixar’s best.
[editor note: Personally I think she missed some great ones like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, All the Star Wars Droids, and the robots from Black Hole (Disney 1979 movie) just to name a few…..but I am sure everyone has an opinion on great movie robots….]
